Cleveland did not make the list of Amazon's top 20 cities contending for its HQ2 announced several months ago. This article, also in yesterday's Cleveland Plain-Dealer print addition, reports that Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and Ohio offered Amazon about $3.5 billion in incentives to put HQ2 in Cleveland. This wasn't as much offered to locate HQ2 in Alexandria, VA or Queens, NY.
What was offered to locate in Cleveland? There were the typical reduced real estate taxes for many years. In addition, the county subsidy included the creation of a power micro-grid, which would allow Amazon to power its facilities independent of the main power grid. The micro-grid would cost $200 million, and be paid for by the sale of bonds. Cleveland is believed to have been the only city to offer Amazon an independent and redundant power supply.
Of course, there were other reasons for Amazon not choosing Cleveland -- airport capacity and being an area with a smaller tech workforce than other cities.
No comments:
Post a Comment