Bacon's Rebellion

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McAuliffe Hires Consultants to Pursue Amazon Deal

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James A. Bacon
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Governor Terry McAuliffe has hired McKinsey & Co. to help Virginia localities build the best possible packages to recruit Amazon’s second headquarters, reports the Virginian-Pilot. The state plans to pay the consultant more than $1 million, while state regions will chip in hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

That information, which I haven’t seen reported anywhere else, comes from Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms, who has committed Virginia Beach to the long-shot endeavor. The project, which could entail the investment of $5 billion and creation of 50,000 jobs, is attracting interest from metropolitan regions across North America. The deadline for submitting proposals is Oct. 19.

Sessoms said he expects economic developers in the Richmond and Northern Virginia regions also to avail themselves of the consulting services. Virginia regions will chip in $300,000 to $400,000 for the work product. Virginia Beach will pay $200,000 of the Hampton Roads region’s share. The City of Norfolk is participating as well.

Aside from available land, great parks and recreation, a strong arts scene, the ocean, solid schools, and a high quality of life, Sessoms said the city has something that most others don’t: access to transoceanic cables that will deliver faster Internet speeds. A new trans-Atlantic cable linking Virginia Beach to Spain will go live next year. Said Sessoms: “We have a cable that is going to allow people to communicate faster than anywhere else in the world.”

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5 responses to “McAuliffe Hires Consultants to Pursue Amazon Deal”

  1. jwgilley Avatar
    jwgilley

    Good job Governor as this would be an enormous catch for Virginia which we need as federal spending is on a downward slide.
    They are in the sales business and will not be employing a large group of high, high tech people. So mid-range techs, cost of living, quality of life and good transportation will be among the unique but broad criteria Amazon will seek.

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I suspect the new Virginia Director of Economic Development probably had a hand in this… In Louisiana , he had a habit of going to the State – and localities to put together “prospectus” to attract businesses… with a record of success.

    McAuliffe has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that much of the “liberal”, “socialist” Dogma spewed out by the right is patently false.

    I’d bet if it were McAuliffe running against Gillespie, he’d slaughter him but the Red counties in Va would still vote for Gillespie anyhow.

    I’m quite sure that Gillespie is going to tar the Gov with “wasting taxpayer money”..

  3. V N Avatar
    V N

    Stupid to waste money from VB. In addition, until traffic woes and those tax killers are done, I’d not be inclined to it.

  4. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    Maybe somebody can help me with Sessoms’ theories of technology. First, Amazon is building a headquarters building rather than a series of data centers. I assume that the headquarters building will be homed to the datacenters run by Amazon Web Services. Hard to believe that a headquarters in Virginia Beach would be homed to datacenters in Europe so the value of that transatlantic cable to HQ2 seems uncertain to me. Maybe Amazon will build a bunch of bandwidth guzzling datacenters to go with their new headquarters – who knows?

    As for, “We have a cable that is going to allow people to communicate faster than anywhere else in the world.” I’m lost.

    1. Rowinguy1 Avatar
      Rowinguy1

      That is a headscratcher, isn’t it?

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