Flashbacks:
The RNGC Caddyshackpocalypse
Bollards!
Architect's rendering of Amazon's new HQ 1/2.
It was widely assumed almost from the get-go that Amazon would plant its new HQ2 somewhere in the Washington, D.C., area, and for a long time it was sounding like the area around the upside-down CIT building a little ways down the Toll Road was a serious contender, with some other oddly shaped parallelograms closer by perhaps a dark mauve horse? Anyhoo, nothing matters any more because it turns out that Amazon has split its HQ2 proposal between DC and NYC, and the 0.5 units of HQ 2 we're getting is going to Crystal Pepsi City. Guess the creepily deserted underground mall with the puppet store was the winning factor for the mole people of Seattle, who are both unaccustomed to and slightly fearful of bright sunlight.
Anyhoo, the smartest thing Amazon is doing is apparently rebranding Crystal City as "National Landing," which is less bad than some other recent efforts to put a shine on the other oversized soulless office parks in the region (looking at you, "America's Next Great City.") The second smartest thing Amazon did was wring more than a half-billion dollars of concessions from Virginia and Arlington County, plus additional transportation improvements (funny, we're not hearing the "we can't stop development waiting for roads to be built" argument now).
Oh, well. Guess we'll just have to wait for our home values to sextuple again so we can "help" the Commonwealth pay for its largesse, the end.
Update: Get ready for that onslaught of hip young Millennial workers:
Damn straight. We've got pickleball.
Secret's safe with us!
ZOMG, Reston was part of the official presentation to Amazon, describing the rich and diverse housing opportunities for its drones knowledge workers:
If you make a tidy $161K, you can afford to pay for parking, the end.
In selecting Crystal City, Bezos has obviously forgotten the Doomsday Scenario:
ReplyDeleteAs the love affair between Trumpy and Li'l Kim over in the DPRK turns nasty, Kim decides to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S. military command and control structure. Unfortunately for Bezos, the Crystal Palace code name for NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain complex in Colorado Springs gets garbled when translated into Korean by Google Translate and comes out as Crystal City. Faster than you can say "Amazon Prime", a DPRK ICBM takes out the Virginia half of HQ2.
Apocalypse Now as, bereft of E-commerce, legions of online shoppers wail, rend their garments, and gnash their teeth at the thought of patronizing brick and mortar stores again.