Five Reasons Why Amazon Should Pick Detroit for Their Second HQ
This morning Amazon announced that they’re looking to open a second headquarter in a major North American city, one that would be an equal to their current HQ in Seattle. Within hours, many cities, like Chicago, quickly voiced their opinion as to why they should be by home to HQ2.
Having lived nearly a third of my life in the Mitten State, I firmly believe that Detroit would make an excellent second (but equal) home to Amazon. Here are five reasons why:
- Affordable Real Estate
While the city has faced many financial difficulties over the years, it opens the door for very affordable real estate. Hosting 50,000 employees in a shiny new headquarters office won’t be cheap, except if you do it somewhere that Forbes considers “the most undervalued real estate in the nation”.
2. Close to A Major Transport Hub (DTW)
Detroit is also home to Detroit Metro Airport, a major airport hub and Delta’s second largest base. And since the city is located fairly centrally in the US, it makes it easy to get just about anywhere in the country (including Amazon HQ1 in Seattle).
3. Great Local Talent
Ok, I may be a bit biased on this one, but Southeastern Michigan is also home to some great universities churning out top talent (Go Blue!). Amazon already recruits heavily from some of these schools, so why not keep them close to their alma mater?
4. Self Driving Tech
It’s the Motor City, so if this region knows one thing it’s cars. And recently, it’s been self driving cars. Ann Arbor, just 30 minutes west of Detroit, created an entire city-within-a-city for the sole purpose of testing self driving tech. The New York Times calls it a “Driverless-Car Hub” and it’s destined to grow in importance as this technology becomes more prevalent.
Why bring this up? Because Amazon is a master of efficiency — it’s well known that you can order almost anything you want and receive it in 2 days, sometimes even 2 hours. But even that is too slow in Jeff Bezos' eyes — until we master teleportation, there will always be room for improvement. Self driving delivery vehicles will be the key to bringing that improvement to fruition.
Heck, Domino’s is already testing this out.
5. Plenty of Airspace for Drones
Another well known technology that Amazon is pursuing: drones. I’ll let orangutang-turned-car enthusiast Jeremy Clarkson demonstrate Amazon’s vision for how drones fit in their delivery supply chain: https://youtu.be/MXo_d6tNWuY
Now, most of the population of Michigan resides in the southern part of the state, namely, the Detroit Metro area. That, combined with little air traffic in the middle and northern parts of the state would give Amazon plenty of breathing room to continue to test their drone delivery infrastructure, and do so safely.
