San Antonio will be one of several cities across the country to bid for the home of Amazon's second headquarters, which was announced this week.
"We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re excited to find a second home."
In their announcement, Amazon laid out how impactful the business has been on their first home, Seattle. There are 40,000 employees, and a $38 billion impact on the economy.
In San Antonio, Geekdom Director of Programs & Ecosystem Development Dax Moreno says we underestimate how transformative Amazon would be to our economy, if we're picked to be their next home
."When you factor in the average salary range, that has an opportunity to really really dramatically alter the landscape of San Antonio's technical community, sending us into a different scale of a city,” he says. "This is the type of thing that we should be excited about."
He says San Antonio checks a lot of boxes, in terms of city size, infrastructure and tech talent. The stumbling block will be public transportation. We lack a rail system that other cities enjoy.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff says there will be a coordinated effort to woo Amazon, but he does not share the same optimism. His concerns lie with the San Antonio Airport and the lack of direct flights.
"AT&T left. Even though we called Toyota, they didn’t consider us," he explains.
Toyota, instead, chose Plano, TX, for their North American Headquarters, despite the 30 minute drive to DFW International. Giles-Parscle, the San Antonio based tech startup which headed Donald Trump's very successful digital strategy in the 2016 election, recently moved its political operations to Florida, citing, again, the shortcomings of San Antonio International.
Wolff says, currently, about 20-percent of San Antonio flyers chose a different airport.
He says, if we have any hope of landing Amazon or any future big business, the airport needs to be addressed.
Moreno says, despite the airport, San Antonio should still aggressively seek Amazon.
"Maybe we don’t get it, but through the process of learning what it takes to win these types of bids, the knowledge gained will results now or later."