The former Harrisburg State Hospital grounds, which is being proposed as the site of Amazon’s second headquarters.
Today marks the application deadline for what is certainly one of the strangest episodes in American business history—the race among cities, towns and states for the second headquarters of online retail giant Amazon.com.
For a pop culture analogy, one need look no farther than that wacky classic movie, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”
In the 1963 film, a bunch of colorful characters scheme, compete, cooperate and go crazy with greed after a notorious thief, about to die, tells them that he has buried a fortune in a public park.
In the real-life case of Amazon.com, CEO Jeff Bezos put in motion the madcap treasure chase, but among America’s mayors, city managers and county commissioners with the lure of 50,000 high-paying jobs.
And madcap it has proven to be.
New Jersey has proposed $7 billion in tax breaks; Frisco, Texas, has volunteered to turn itself into a company town; and tiny Stoneville, Ga., has proposed renaming a part of itself “Amazon.”
These are the governmental equivalents of renting a sputtering biplane to beat everyone else to a sack of money buried beneath a giant “W.”
So, where does that leave south-central Pennsylvania?
Back in early September, when Amazon unleashed the madness, the company listed several criteria that it wanted for its second headquarters, including an urban center with a population of at least 1 million people, a “business-friendly” environment and the ability to attract and retain technical talent. It’s also believed that Amazon would smile upon access to transit, strong cultural and nightlife amenities and a generally progressive environment—i.e., things favored by a young, educated, IT-savvy workforce.
Given these criteria, the Harrisburg area would seem unlikely to make the cut. However, to me, the fascinating thing is this—our area is actually a great fit for so-called HQ2, if only Amazon were willing to think outside its branded cardboard box.
First, let’s tackle the population requirement, which seems, right off, to knock our area out of competition. Sure, Harrisburg proper is tiny, but, as has been pointed out by local boosters, south-central PA combined does approach 1 million people. However, why does this matter at all?
I think the requirement exists because Amazon doesn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere. That’s understandable. But location is actually one of our area’s strongest draws for people who move here. It’s perfectly situated near several major metros, but also isn’t trapped inside any of them (if you’ve ever been stuck in traffic on the Washington Beltway, you know what I mean by being “trapped” in a city). It’s often faster to drive from Harrisburg to Rockville, Md., than to drive to that suburban boomtown from parts of neighboring Prince George’s County.
There’s also room to grow. Our area has large amounts of available, buildable, affordable land, as well as a city with an enormous quantity of underused, undervalued, ramshackle and even empty housing, much of it historic and potentially beautiful if restored. Harrisburg was built to accommodate about 100,000 people, but today has only half that many.
Certainly, with HQ2, there would be growing pains and a need to improve roads, but that’s true of any metro area that lands the coveted prize. It’s hard for me to imagine how several cities that seem to be leading contenders, such as Boston and Washington, D.C., can absorb 50,000 more workers—and their cars. Meanwhile, Harrisburg also has the benefit of easy access to an underutilized airport and a rail infrastructure that once accommodated hundreds of trains a day.
In addition, Harrisburg has what many major East Coast cities lack—easy, fast ways out. Within a short drive, you can be hiking or camping or at the beach or mountains. Or you’re in the famous Pennsylvania Dutch countryside or at a brewery or winery. Or you’re in Lancaster or York or Carlisle exploring shops, galleries and restaurants in those historic, quaint towns.
But that last point brings me to why, despite a valiant effort, our area won’t be taken seriously as a contender.
No, it’s not a lack of population or insufficient tax incentives or even our dysfunctional state government. Harrisburg’s application won’t be considered because our area is far, far off of Amazon’s radar. There’s little chance that the site selection committee, 3,000 miles away in Seattle, knows much, if anything, about this mystery region along the lower Susquehanna River.
I speak from some experience.
For years, I lived in D.C., which isn’t far away, but I never considered south-central Pennsylvania as a place to go. Then I moved up here and found all this amazing stuff: towns, sites, nature, trails, restaurants. Why didn’t I know about these before?
It shouldn’t be this way. Cities like Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Carlisle, Lebanon; towns like Gettysburg, Elizabethtown, Hershey, Hanover, Newport, New Oxford; surrounding villages and countryside—all share a history, a geography, a climate, a cuisine and a character. Like family members, each is unique but also pieces of a sensible, natural whole.
Several of our area’s officials, including Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, have told TheBurg that, if nothing else, the Amazon application will serve as a great exercise in regional cooperation. Here’s hoping that’s true, that the application process is the beginning of viewing ourselves as an identifiable, even marketable, six-county community, not as isolated pockets of people who just happen to live near each other. We already share a sensibility and spirit; we just now need to build upon it for the greater good, carving out a regional identity in the process.
So, no, we won’t lose the mad scramble for the Amazon fortune primarily because we lack a subway or because Buckhead is cooler, but because of—well, what exactly is south-central Pennsylvania anyway and why should I be there? That’s the problem we need to fix. And it’s fixable. In our case, the sum of the whole is far greater than the individual parts.
