Readers respond on Amazon HQ2 (part 1)
Kyle Terry is one of Chicago Cityscape’s hundreds of satisfied Pro members. He’s a market feasibility analyst and associate at Goodman Williams Group, working for municipalities across the Chicago metro area to help guide urban planning and for real estate development companies. In my post giving the rundown of what Amazon wants, what people think they want, and what Chicagoans should do about the company’s second headquarters, I asked readers to chime in.
I am sure you have been to South Lake Union in Seattle [I have] and have seen the layout of the Amazon campus there. The answer for Chicago is to give Amazon a truly urban campus.
If they want a three phase buildout, I would propose this:
- Old Post Office. It is a block away from the Clinton Blue Line and will transform a sweet building. Let them do a little branding that would be seen by all of the traffic going under the building on Congress Expressway.
- Union Station. Another great location with incredible roots and access to public transit and tons of talent. This allows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to help with architectural design choices, as the redevelopment and design plans are underway currently. With the Old Post Office and Union Station they now have a couple of million square feet of space in or adjacent to two gorgeous, historically significant buildings located just one block away from each other.
- Build up the mid-sized modern offices, similar to the ones Amazon has been putting up in Seattle, on surface parking lots and underutilized parcels in the West Loop Gate neighborhood (this is the north-south oriented area between the Chicago River and Ogilvie and Union Stations on the east, and the Kennedy Expressway on the west). Buildings of 3–7 stories, with plazas out front, maybe some green space, a bubble building, and a dog park for employees and residents. Typical smaller-scale West Coast tech HQ.
Acreage-wise, all three phases don’t match their demands; but really, who has 100 acres of pad-ready space in an urban environment? Even the site on the Chicago River south of Roosevelt Road, owned by Related Midwest, is only 62 acres.
These three phases It would be a unique solution to their HQ2 problem. With proximity to Union and Ogilvie Metra stations, as well as the 24-hour Blue Line, bike lanes, and a ton of bus routes, it would give access to a wide swath of talent and hopefully would ease a lot of traffic concerns.
It gives Amazon flexibility on a wide variety of architectural office styles, mixing old with new, as well as long-term flexibility in building out and leasing a similar scattered-site campus to what they have in South Lake Union.
It would be a truly unique urban campus that would dramatically transform one area of the City, essentially turning the entire West Loop Gate area into “Amazon City”.
And isn’t that really what Bezos wants in the end?