Category: Economic development
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How Walkable Urbanism and the Talent Pipeline Won the Amazon Deal
More information is coming out about the wheeling and dealing behind Virginia’s incentive package that coaxed Amazon, Inc., to locate a $2.5 billion campus in Northern Virginia. It turns out that many of the key pieces in Virginia’s incentive package were initiatives that had been in the works for years. Virginia is putting resources into…
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The Political Calculations Behind the Amazon Package
Michael Martz has done an excellent job reporting on the political factors that shaped the incentive package that induced Amazon, Inc., to select Crystal City-Potomac Yard in Northern Virginia along with New York City to co-host its massive expansion. The article illuminates the critical role of the little-known Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission (MEI),…
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Amazon Deal Sets a New Low
Posted on behalf of occasional contributor Les Schreiber: It’s interesting to see the responses to the Amazon deal. Most of what you read in Virginia-based media is positive, but in New York not so much. Many who scream about the “nanny state” and too much welfare and government interference in the economy seem happy with…
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Limits to Transparency in Amazon Deal
The Commonwealth of Virginia has set new standards of transparency in disclosing the details of its agreement with Amazon, Inc., to build a massive new facility in Arlington and Alexandria with some $2.5 billion in public inducements. But there may be limits to that transparency. Benjamin Freed, technology editor of State Scoop, tweeted yesterday that the…
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Dissecting Virginia’s Amazon Deal
Virginia has committed to investing a sum unprecedented for an economic development deal in the Commonwealth — roughly $2.5 billion in state and local dollars to bring Amazon, Inc. to Northern Virginia. In a presentation to the House Appropriations Committee yesterday, Stephen Moret, CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) provided a detailed account…
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Unprecedented Details Available on Amazon Deal
The most unprecedented thing about the state and local incentive package for Amazon announced yesterday is its transparency. Never has this much detailed information been provided to the general public immediately upon announcement, outside the protection of a non-disclosure agreement, and apparently the details will continue to flow. Virginia Economic Development Partnership President Steve Moret…
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Caution Flag on Amazon Inducements
The Virginia response to the Amazon’s 1/2 HQ2 (half of the originally proposed second headquarters) announcement is not uniformly delirious. Here are a couple of responses landing in my in-box — one from the center-left Commonwealth Institute (CI) and the other from the center-right Mercatus Center that urge caution in approving $1.7 billion in subsidies…
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Nailed It (with the Help of $$2.5 Billion in Incentives)!
The suspense is over. Amazon, Inc., has officially announced that it will invest $2.5 billion to establish a new headquarters in Northern Virginia. The facility will be located in the Pentagon City and Crystal City area of Arlington County and the Potomac Yard in the City of Alexandria. In addition to the 22,000 jobs…
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Amazon HQ Speculation in Full Boil
Northern Virginia is solidifying its position as the perceived front runner in the competition for Amazon’s massive HQ2 project, and Arlington’s Crystal City area looks like the front runner in Northern Virginia. The Washington Post reports that Amazon’s talks with the Seattle-based tech giant have been more detailed than discussions with other leading prospects. “Crystal…
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A Tightly Focused Plan for Boosting Virginia’s Business-Climate Rankings
Virginia’s business climate rankings have recovered modestly in recently years, but they remain significantly lower than in its glory days and well behind the states with which the Old Dominion competes for major corporate investment. That harsh reality comes through loud and clear in a presentation made by Stephen Moret, president of the Virginia Economic…
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Safety Training for Offshore Wind Workers?
Who knows if and when Virginia will ever build a dynamic wind-power industry, but at least one aspiring entrepreneur wants to make Virginia Beach the location of the East Coast’s first safety training facility for wind industry workers. Scott Chierepko, a retired Navy Seal, wants to break ground on a 25-acres facility complete with a…
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Data Centers as Cloud-Service Exporters
The ultra-high capacity undersea cables linking Virginia Beach to Brazil and Spain has benefited the economy not just of Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads but of Henrico County. Telxius, the operator of subsea cables terminating in Virginia Beach, has established a location in QTS Realty Trust’s data center in eastern Henrico. Reports Virginia Business magazine: The…
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Virginia Needs to Up its Game When Talking about “Rural” Development
Despite the creation of 4,500 jobs in the “rural” portions of Virginia since he took office in January, Governor Ralph Northam told the Virginia Rural Summit yesterday that Virginia needs to do more to stimulate employment in rural areas. Sounding familiar themes, Northam stressed STEM education, broadband access, and transportation. Twenty-first century jobs such as cyber-security…
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Taxes, Innovation and Virginia’s Lost Mojo
In 1940 In 1940, technological innovation in the United States was concentrated overwhelmingly in the Great Lakes states, the Northeast, and California. The powerful economic force known as agglomeration — in which geographic proximity boosts the productivity of inventors and researchers — acted to perpetuate those states’ lead. Yet over the following six decades, the…
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Oops, Where Did that $3-4 Million Deficit Come From?
The idea behind the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) is fantastic: Create a facility where Virginia manufacturers and universities can collaborate on advanced-manufacturing research projects that all participants can share. Research staff for the Prince George County-based facility are expert in everything from “vertical diffusion furnaces” and “robot arm-based automation cells” to “thermal spray…