Just under the wire, the Center for Economic Growth on Thursday submitted its own proposal to Amazon in hopes of securing the company’s planned $5 billion second headquarters somewhere in the Capital Region.
The center identified sites that satisfy Amazon’s requirements of an initial 500,000 square feet of building space by 2019 and 8 million square feet beyond 2027.
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The deadline for submitting bids was Thursday. More than 100 cities have reportedly expressed interest in landing the Amazon development.
The local proposal calls for a downtown Albany headquarters straddling the Hudson River, with a capacity for 2 million square feet of office space in the city of Albany’s 25-acre site between the Times Union Center and Broadway, and an additional space for 6 million square feet on 75 acres across the Hudson in the city of Rensselaer. The Albany and Rensselaer sites could be connected with a pedestrian bridge across the Hudson, water taxis and/or a gondola, according to a news release from the center.
The local proposal also identified an unspecified number of alternative sites in Albany and Saratoga counties as well. The center did not say how much it cost to develop the Amazon proposal.
The center prepared the Amazon proposal in collaboration with Capitalize Albany, Rensselaer County IDA, Saratoga County Prosperity Partnership and the Saratoga Economic Development Corp.
Albany’s proposal said the region fares far better than Seattle, home to Amazon’s primary headquarters, in areas such as computer and information research and development space, crime, affordable housing, crime and vulnerability to natural disasters.
Categories: -News-, Business, Schenectady County
