Vancouver is one of 238 cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico hoping to lure Amazon and win the bid to house the company’s second headquarters, but what exactly is the city offering?
The Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC) says it didn’t offer any additional cash incentives, but it did offer so-called “built-in” incentives.
“Rather than engaging in a “race to the bottom” with cash incentives, the Project Execution Team presented a cohesive, comprehensive and compelling narrative that focuses on the built-in incentives of operating in and around the Vancouver region,” reads a release from VEC.
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The commission said the incentives focused on real estate, health care and labour.
“When compared to several sites in the United States, VEC estimates that these combined factors would allow Amazon to save tens of billions over a 10-year horizon,” reads part of the release.
Also part of the city’s bid was a 500,000 square-foot space for the first phase of the project, as well as more space for the second and third phases.
“With an innovative, entrepreneurial, highly educated workforce, Vancouver offers a robust talent pool of work-ready graduates that will easily accommodate the 50,000 new workers that Amazon would look to hire over the course of the first 15 years of their HQ2 project,” reads the release.
Amazon will make a decision based on the following criteria:
- Site/building
- Capital/operation costs
- Incentives
- Labour force
- Logistics
- Time to operations
- Cultural community fit
- Community/quality of life
VEC said the city fares very favourably in most of the categories.
Amazon is expected to make its decision in 2018.
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