Toronto fighting to land Amazon’s new headquarters
Toronto should be a “prime candidate” for Amazon’s second headquarters, Mayor John Tory says. Tech giant says its “HQ2” will bring as many as 50,000 jobs to host city.

TheStar.com
Sept. 7, 2017
David Rider

Tech giant Amazon is looking to establish a second HQ in a city in North America and Toronto is aiming to get it. Municipal and provincial officials know competition will be fierce for the facility, which will generate tens of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in investment and potentially massive spinoffs. But they are determined to do all they can to secure it.

Seattle-based Amazon announced Thursday its search for a home for “Amazon HQ2,” adding it expects to invest “more than $5 billion (U.S.) in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs.”

Inviting competitive bids, Jeff Bezos, the online retail giant’s founder and chief executive, added that the new complex will be a “full equal” to the company’s Seattle “urban campus,” which has 33 buildings, measures 8.1 million square feet and boasts 24 restaurants and cafés.

In an interview, Mayor John Tory called the chance of securing the facility for Toronto, which is on the cusp of a tech boom, “the Olympics of bidding, for 50,000 jobs over time . . . it’s gigantic.”

Tory said Amazon’s request-for-proposal outline of what it wants in a winning bid sounds as though it was written for Canada’s biggest city. It asks for a large educated workforce and the “presence and support of a diverse population, excellent institutions of higher education, local government structure and elected officials eager and willing to work with the company.”

“We should be bidding for this and be very, very competitive and I’m in the midst of talking to the other governments to make sure that’s what we do,” the mayor said Thursday afternoon, adding they were determining who should “quarterback” the proposal, which must be submitted by Oct. 19.

Within hours of Amazon’s morning announcement, a raft of North American states and cities, including Vancouver, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit, signaled plans to fight for a tenant weighty enough, according to tech industry observers, to trigger the creation of new firms and propel a city to the status of a global player.

In a Bloomberg news column Conor Sen, a portfolio manager for New River Investments in Atlanta, said Amazon’s real options are Toronto, Boston, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas and Denver.

Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid told the Star’s Robert Benzie that Ontario officials are already working hard to lure the new flagship site for Amazon, which announced in June it would add 200 staff to the 600 at its Toronto office. The company also has workers at a corporate office in Vancouver and a Montreal-based “cloud region.”

“This is a groundbreaking type of investment; I mean, they’re talking 50,000 jobs, and there’s no question that we wouldn’t be bold enough to be very ambitious when it comes to trying to land this,” said Duguid, adding that Ontario’s chief investment officer Allan O’Dette “is already on this” and the province has heard expressions of interest from officials in Toronto and other municipalities.

“We certainly would work with our federal partners as well; something like this would probably require all three levels of government working together.”

While Toronto’s educated workforce, powerhouse cluster of universities, booming Toronto-Waterloo tech corridor and internationally recognized quality of life all tick boxes on Amazon’s wishlist, the company also wants bidders to outline “total incentives offered for the project.”

Duguid made no promises, but noted his government has spent $3 billion on incentives for businesses over the years to “leverage” $27 billion in investment and create 170,000 jobs.

Also keen is Toronto Global, established this year with funding from all three levels of government to lure companies to the Toronto region.

“We read the (request for proposal) this morning and said the only place you’re going to get all of this is Toronto, so let’s go,” said the agency’s chief executive Toby Lennox.

The opportunity comes at a fortuitous time for Toronto. Uber and Thomson Reuters have both made significant recent tech investments in the city.

Waterfront Toronto will soon announce the winning bidder to build a high-tech test neighbourhood in Quayside on the city’s eastern waterfront. Companies vying for that prize reportedly include Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google.

“I think Toronto is a really reasonable place for a company the scale of Amazon to look at,” said OCAD University president Sara Diamond, adding that all levels of government have done a great job positioning the Toronto region for major tech investment.

Toronto’s emergence as a cultural magnet and sports city, and strong edge over U.S. cities in public education and health care, should also help, she said.

Abdullah Snobar, executive director of Ryerson University’s DMZ business incubator, called Toronto “an underestimated, but hugely accomplished, city.”

“We pack a punch way above our weight,” but should work on “celebrating our successes, telling our story a little better,” he said, predicting Toronto’s predictability and stability, compared to what’s happening in the U.S., will appeal to a global company such as Amazon.

Toronto also boasts large swaths of central undeveloped land, particularly in east downtown. David Gerofsky, chief executive of developer First Gulf, says his company’s East Harbour site at the former Unilever site could host Amazon as an environmentally sustainable transit hub that can host up to 70,000 workers in 12-million-plus square feet.

“There’s no other site like it with scale in the heart of a major city and that’s what makes it quite unique,” he said.