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The west coast of Florida, and most of the state, whiffed at the Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes — but not all is lost.
Bids on the project, projected to include up to 50,000 employees and some $5 billion in capital investments, included two from Manatee County and one combined from Tampa and St. Petersburg. Miami-Dade/Broward/Palm Beach, Orlando and Jacksonville also submitted bids.
Yet Miami was the only one in Florida to make it to the second round, of 20 cities. That list, the release adds, includes Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Nashville and Raleigh, N.C. “Thank you to all 238 communities that submitted proposals,” says Holly Sullivan, with Amazon Public Policy, in the statement. “Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough — all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity. Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.”
Officials from all the regions that didn't make the cut had similar sentiments — that the process was good to go through, particularly in Tampa-St. Petersburg, which worked together on the bid. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, meanwhile, tweeted out a kudos to Miami, writing that “with our low taxes, unbeatable weather and world-class airports and seaports, there is no doubt Florida should be the number one choice” for Amazon.
Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, outspoken opponent of using incentive packages to lure companies to the state, says the win for Florida comes in losing most of the bids. In an interview with the News Service of Florida, Corcoran says Miami's chances aside, the Amazon lesson should be fixing what's wrong with the state first — not dangling millions of dollars to woo businesses.
For example, Corcoran cites the GE headquarters sweepstakes in 2015, where several Florida cities lost out to Boston. That wasn't due to a lack of enough incentives, argues Corcoran, but an underperforming education system. On Miami's bid, echoing the thoughts of some officials in that region, Corcoran, in the interview, cited transportation issues as what could be the holdup for Amazon.
“There's where the investments should have been made and should continue to be made,” Corcoran told the News Service. “If you have low crime, low taxes, low regulation, a good infrastructure and you have, more than anything, a great educational system, we will not have a single problem luring all the businesses and all the people in this country here.”
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