Comments

1
I find it profoundly ironic that we criticize trump for wanting to build his wall while we continue to build our own. There's little to no difference between the "center" and the right.
2
"This investment firm is now transforming these floors into office spaces for Amazon—the black hole that's sucking the life out of thousands of department stores and malls around the country."

Someone, somewhere once wrote "Main Cause of Retail Apocalypse Isn't Amazon but Debt." I can't remember who.
3
Charles, when Seattle dips – and it will - into the next recession, and disposable income dries up, The Stranger will be shuttered for lack of ad revenue. (You realize that's coming, right?) Yeah, THEN you can tell us how glad you are that high-wage employers go elsewhere.
5
#3 cool prediction nostradamus.
6
@4,

Your comparison of someone's home to an unoccupied expanse of space beneath a freaking freeway is the most nonsensical thing on this page.
7
"Why don't we build schools instead of prisons?"

Because we need both. Where else are we to put all those highly educated corporate criminals?
9
Boeing got very little when it moved to Chicago. Boeing was moving OUT of Seattle, for the same reason that Amazon is. (Yes, there is no HQ2, the Amazon campus will be emptied.). Boeing was tired of unions, and fearful of new taxes, including a possible corporate income tax. Boeing was tired of the people of Seattle holding them responsible for outsourcing production, for polluting large areas around Seattle, for seeking tax breaks throughout its entire history (did you know Boeing pays almost no property taxes inside Seattle?) In short, they preferred to have some distance between the HQ and their main production facility at the time. Soon after the move to Chicago, they began opening new production facilities in ‘right-to-work’ states, and entered into ‘shared production’ with firms in Japan, China, Italy and Spain. This would have been difficult if they continued to be under close scrutiny in Washington state.
10
Alright Charles, so you’re ok with a white dude strapping on a gun, and walking around 3rd & yelser multiple times a day, so he can feel fear and possibly be in a situation to use his gun, all for a fucking article?
11
@9 Actually, Boeing moved their executive headquarters to Chicago, and so had nothing to do with unions, taxes or pollution. The real reason: Boeing CEO Phil Condit was in a messy divorce, and his wife was from a major Seattle socialite family. Condit was slime, and was no longer welcome in the small circle of rich folks here. He was later canned for having an affair with a subordinate and scamming the DoD on contracts. Sometimes companies do things for silly, petty reasons, often because no one wants to admit they have no fucking clue what they're doing.
12
Sir Vic dear, I worked for a company with a similar situation: The CEO's wife tried very hard to break into the local arts scene and had no luck (and I can see why - she insisted on singing at every company party and she was dreadful). So we bought a ridiculous company - even more ridiculous than ours, which served absolutely no purpose other than data collection and spam - and they sold the house in Denny Blaine and moved to Oakland, where she got a position as Artistic Director for some regional theatre company.

We eventually got bought out by University of Phoenix, who deserved our garbage company.

As for Macy's, their failure is that they have no idea what the local markets want, and they don't understand that the future of off-line retail is to create environments where people can be entertained, educated and social. It's ironic that they don't get that, for that's what made department stores attractive to consumers in the first place.
13
@8 - You've never been to those spaces underneath the freeway, have you? You should check them out some time before they're inaccessible, it's educational. Also, very very unlike a house. Rather barren & bare packed dirt. Years of grey traffic soot impacted into the ground and on all vegetation. But it's somewhat protected from rain, so it's pretty logical that homeless people would go there, no one else wants to be there.

But hey! Let's fence off even that bit of wasteland to make their lives ever more miserable! No rain protection for you, poor!

Your comment @4 is inane at best. Sorry.
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Prince Harry always was the upstart of the royals. The mould breaker. The webel. Remember when he wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party? That was the day punk rock finally arrived in Buckingham Palace. Only took 25 or so years to travel from the streets of London to the gilded halls.
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@9 -- Yes, there is no HQ2, the Amazon campus will be emptied.
Do you have any evidence or solid information backing that statement up? Because on the face of it it sounds rather unbelievable. Amazon would drop and/or relocate all of its 50,000 staff from Seattle? That sort of disruption would be FANTASTIC for business operations.
14
"Jeff Bezos Is The First Human Ever To Have a Net Worth of $100 billion"


You forgot to read your own link, Charles. The fourth sentence says "The $100 billion milestone makes Bezos, 53, the first billionaire to build a 12-figure net worth since 1999, when Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates hit the mark."

15
@9:

Why in the world would AMZN spend hundreds of millions of dollars investing in new infrastructure here in Seattle only to vacate it and transfer their local operations to a new location where presumably they'll need to spend even more hundreds of millions of dollars? Bezos may be an avaricious SOB, but he's not stupid; you don't amass a $100,000,000,000 fortune (on paper at least) by throwing money away on useless real estate boondoggles that you plan to essentially abandon soon after completion.
16
That snake in the toilet is a Carpet Python, Morelia spilota. Not a Ball Python.
17
@15, @9

HQ2 is a lie, there will of course be only one HQ. No other company has "separate but equal" headquarters, and Amazon will not, either. There will be one HQ, and a large satellite campus. The only unanswered question is whether the Seattle office will eventually become the satellite, or remain the HQ after the new campus is built out and fully staffed.
18
@17:

Assuming you're correct - not a safe bet, IMO - even if Seattle becomes the satellite campus it'll still be a huge one; an estimated 50,000-plus employees and 12,000,000 square feet of office space (roughly 20% of the total amount of office inventory in the city) by 2022 would still make them the largest single employer AND building occupant in town by a very wide margin.
19
@15 Amazon is looking for a place to move core operations because:

1. They've helped create the financial conditions to make it unliveable and unaffordable. The situation is now biting them because--
2. They can't recruit workers to come here at the same pace. There's not enough housing and the housing on offer is very expensive. The majority of their under 40 workforce is saddled with student loan debt, the repayment of which doesn't take into account how expensive the city is so even on an Amazon starting salary affording a $1,000+ month loan repayment and a $2400/month tiny box apartment in Seattle and a recockulous housing market which people can't really buy into which really kind of puts a wet blanket on trying to start a family on top of crazy rent prices and student loan payments... See what I mean here?
3. The city's relationship to Seattle has soured a lot. The optimistic and open reception to their wants is gone. They've taken Seattle for about all their worth and its going to be blood from a stone because much of the rest of the Seattle deeply resents Amazon and would really rather (no matter how self harming) that they'd just go away.
4. Building regulations on the West Coast are intense. Building regulations in the Midwest basically consist of 'don't pour toxic waste in this hole' and 'if you do, don't tell us about it'. Amazon will have even more autonomy to set up operations.
5. They can pay people less - a lot less because the average rent in the Midwest is so much lower that you want to burst into tears. There's a glut of cheap homes to buy because people generally don't want to live there but when they do, they can buy a lot of house of basically ten bucks.
6. They're turning Amazon into a logistics company so that all of their shipping and transport is handled in house. The middle of the country is positioned to ship everything faster and with a lot of unregulated land, they can probably successfully build their own airport to go with all the planes they just bought. There's no room to build such a thing here.

The next city that gets them is doomed.
20
@1: what "wall" are "we" building? fences under the freeway?

if that's what you meant, it's not equivalent and your conclusion is hyperbolic.
21
@19 - Good points.
But given Amazon's future-forward thinking, I believe that the next city that gets them will be domed. Maybe doomed too, but definitely domed. With multiple drone'ports and a zepplin aerial on top.
22
Regarding the fencing off of the area under the West Seattle viaduct: Perhaps if we had instead made those into regulated RV spaces with power hookups and sanitation facilities, and had created some accountability (nothing too drastic - just clean up after yourself and keep your drama in your trailer), it would have been a innovative solution. But as it stands, it was crazy down there, and not at all sustainable. Just because there's a big open space, that doesn't mean it's going to be filled productively.
26
Well then, dear facts2supportURpoint, can't we do something like Tacoma AND have some regulated spaces? That's what the tarped parking lot sounds like.

Not every RV camper is mentally ill, addicted, or unwilling to work. Some of them are just in bad situations. And some of them are there because we are a port city with seasonal employment. We don't distinguish between that and the sketchy camper filled with people who need special consideration. And that's a disservice to the RV campers who aren't like that.
27
@22 Fuck the least common denominator zoning shit. People wanna live like hillbillies? Move out to the hills.

Wanna live in a city? Get a city job. Earn city money. Pay city rent. Do city things. But no goddam camping.

No, we're not creating facilities for your lazy ass RV lifestyle. If you can't get your shit together, we'll help you get it together. In a shelter. In a shelter until you sort your shit out, or move your ass elsewhere.
29
Zok dear, do you even live in Seattle? As I said above, there are people who legitimately live in RV's because they are doing migratory or maritime work. They live in RV's because hotels (and even RV parks) are ridiculously expensive and often full. Underused spaces, like under the West Seattle viaduct, would be a great place to house those people, who are beneficial to our local economy. Certainly more beneficial than the leaches who live along Lake Washington.

I know nuance isn't your thing, but you really should try it. Otherwise, you just end up looking stupid.

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