Raleigh, HQ2, and the top 20 shortlist

Raleigh and the Research Triangle region made the 20 city shortlist for the Amazon HQ2 project this week, encompassing 16 metro areas in the United States, plus Toronto in Canada.

I was pleased, but not surprised, that we were selected to the shortlist. Our market has a number of advantages and sound fundamentals as many have noted, with three tier 1 research universities, a sound business climate, educated citizenry with strong workforce development system, and terrific quality of life.

While the "shortlist" is still rather large, it is still a big deal to be on it, as more than 90% of cities that submitted proposals were not selected, including Minneapolis, San Diego, Detroit, and neighboring Charlotte.

One thing we do know - we have at least met the basic threshold for the questions that Amazon posed regarding a location for HQ2, including job growth, labor pool, quality of life, and transportation.

While we cannot know exactly how Amazon internally weighs these factors, the reality is that we are strong on all of them – and many others, including business climate, innovative economy, and being a place that people actually want to live.

Regarding mobility: our community will continue to tell the story of America's Most Forward-Moving Region, with our low congestion, steadily increasing travel options, and clear willingness to invest in our transportation future. 2017 was a great year for the future of transportation in the Triangle, and mobility will continue to be a strategic competitive advantage for our market as we grow.

Will we get HQ2? Time will tell. Given that our only obvious “weakness” is the size of our market – and that situation will resolve itself over time given our population growth rate, with or without Amazon – the bottom line is that we have a great opportunity to land HQ2 in Raleigh and the Research Triangle area.

As I said back in September, we recognize that Amazon—and any expanding company—will pick the metro area with the combination of current attributes and a future trajectory that aligns best with its business objectives. With our array of assets, we expect to be very competitive.

We wish Amazon well, wherever they choose to invest.

Joe Milazzo II, PE, Executive Director, Regional Transportation Alliance
RTA is the voice of the regional business community on transportation