County recommending two sites as candidates for Amazon’s HQ2 project
Washington County economic development officials are submitting potential sites to the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance for consideration for the proposed second national headquarters for online retail and technology giant Amazon.
Jeff Kotula, president of Washington County Chamber of Commerce, acknowledged Tuesday that the county is pursuing the project and has two locations for PRA to consider.
“Washington County is actively pursuing the Amazon headquarters project by working with both our local and regional economic development partners,” Kotula said in an emailed statement to the Observer-Reporter. “We believe that our ready-to-go business parks such as Starpointe Business Park and Alta Vista Business Park, as well as the county’s dynamic economy, high quality of life and growing population, will be our competitive advantages in making us a strong candidate for Amazon’s new headquarters.”
Pittsburgh is considered to be on a “short list” of potential cities that could host Amazon’s second headquarters, given its educational institutions like Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh that produce engineering graduates, its growing prominence as a technology center for robotics, self-driving vehicles and advanced manufacturing, and its recent rise as a city that is attracting more young people who work in technology fields.
PRA President David Ruppersberger said in a statement Wednesday that while the Amazon project represents “a huge opportunity for Southwestern Pennsylvania,” it also is a certainty that competition will be fierce from other regions around the country. For that reason, he said, the alliance is seeking input on the project from all 10 counties with which it partners.
“In an effort to generate the best possible submission for the region, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance is coordinating with regional partners in all 10 counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania to identify properties for consideration,” he said. “Since the PRA policy is not to comment on the specifics of individual projects – before final investment decisions are made – we don’t have additional details to share at this time.”
While numerous Allegheny County sites near Pittsburgh have been mentioned as possibilities, Kotula said earlier that so far Washington County’s effort to present possible sites has been a “quiet” one. But he and others in the county’s economic development organizations said the two business parks’ amenities and locations match many of the criteria Seattle-based Amazon listed in its request for proposals from cities that it released earlier this month.
According to the “Amazon HQ2 RFP,” the company, which currently has more than 380,000 employees at multiple facilities in North America and worldwide, now requires a second corporate headquarters in North America because of its growth.
The company said its second headquarters, where it will hire as many as 50,000 new full-time employees over the next 10 to 15 years with an average annual total compensation exceeding $100,000, will have more than $5 billion in capital expenditures.
Amazon said it has a preference for:
• Metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people;
• A stable and business-friendly environment;
• Urban or suburban locations to attract and retain strong technical talent, and
• Communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options.
In a summary of the project’s ideal site and building requirements, the company stipulates that it wants to build an initial 500,000-square-foot building as a first phase by 2019, but would have a total square-footage requirement of up to 8 million square feet after 2027.
Its core preferences for sites include proximity to a population center within 30 miles of the site; proximity to an international airport within 45 minutes; a proximity to major highways and arterial roads not more than 1 to 2 miles from the headquarters; and access to mass transit at the site, with direct access to rail, train, subway/metro or bus routes.
Dan Reitz, executive director of Washington County Council on Economic Development, which is developing Starpointe in Hanover and Smith townships, said Tuesday the site meets many of Amazon’s requirements.
Starpointe, which already has many tenants, still has about 600 developable acres, and is only several miles from Pittsburgh International Airport via a completed section of the Southern Beltway.
The Starpointe location also would meet the requirement of being within 30 miles of Pittsburgh, he added.
While there are a couple of criteria that the location couldn’t currently meet, Reitz said, “What we can’t do, we can try to address.”
One issue would be the mass transit requirement, but Reitz believes that could be worked out between transit agencies from Washington and Allegheny counties.
The other potential Washington County site is Alta Vista, a smaller business park just off Interstate 70 near Bentleyville.
Chris Whitlatch, chief executive officer of the Mon Valley Alliance, which operates the park, said Wednesday it has about 85 acres, but also has access to additional acreage that would make it eligible for Amazon’s 100-acre requirement.
Like Starpointe, Alta Vista would meet the requirements for proximity to Pittsburgh and the airport.
He said the park already has buried utility lines and high-speed fiber optics.
Whitlatch said the MVA also has identified other potential spaces in the valley – particularly in Fallowfield Township – that would be suitable for new housing development.
Like Starpointe, Alta Vista would coordinate mass transportation services with Washington County and the Mon Valley’s transit authorities if Amazon showed interest in the site, Whitlatch said.
He said Amazon’s choice of the Pittsburgh region would be a major benefit for the entire region, regardless of where it might land here.
“It would be a good story for Pittsburgh, but it would be an incredible story for the Valley” if it came there, he said.