Amazon HQ2

They're going to have extend the Metro to Caroline County so all the new employees making $15.00 an hour can commute in. They can't afford to live any closer.

Sand Box John wrote: The odds of Amazon setting up shop in the Washington area are about the same as me being nominated by the Democratic Party to run for the office of President of The United States in 2020.

"Chris Brown"
Amazon is officially coming to the DC area.

Let's talk about it.

I only have to eat half of the crow.

"Greg Moore"
Congratulations on your pending nomination :-)

50% chance, 0% chance base on the platform I would be run on.

mtuandrew wrote:So it begins.

A few important transit improvements come to mind:
-a true intermodal VRE station with bus turnaround and covered connections to both the airport and WMATA Crystal City
-a busway extension to Pentagon and to the I-395 HOV lanes
-a Crystal City streetcar study
-the WMATA Potomac Yard station

Electrification of the Potomac River bridge

Thoughts from one of my posts in another thread: Yikes this will not be good for D.C. Traffic is already some of the worst in the country and we all know the Metro is not doing well. There is no way they will be able to handle the numbers. Not to mention the gentrification. Ugh.

What do you think?

daybeers wrote:Thoughts from one of my posts in another thread: Yikes this will not be good for D.C. Traffic is already some of the worst in the country and we all know the Metro is not doing well. There is no way they will be able to handle the numbers. Not to mention the gentrification. Ugh.

What do you think?

I think it is good and bad. It is a huge force as far as expanding service and investing more money into transit, but on the other hand, they need to figure out the housing situation. What if they built an equal number of apartments as the number of people working at HQ2.5 people will have the choice to live directly at Amazon or elsewhere, and if the employees don't stay their then other people can get an apartment there. I think this is a good way to handle the surplus in demand for housing in the DC area with the addition of Amazon. Also, I think that we'll see huge amounts of investing in bike paths and transit because Amazon understands that the traffic won't hold up, and Amazon is doing similar projects back in Seattle.

Potomac Yard Mall redevelopment is coming in three, two, one...

Anyone know where Bezos intends to plop stuff down? There are a couple 1M sq ft redevelopments in Crystal City - sorry, “National Landing” - but I could also see them buying existing housing structures to tear down.

This is not that big of a deal. At 25,000 jobs, Amazon would only be replacing basically 1:1 the jobs that have moved out of Crystal City due to defense industry realignment. Crystal City has some very outdated infrastructure and architecture and it is good to see a major new tenant coming in and getting everybody to think seriously about freshening it up.

So instead of building the Potomac Yard station with both entrances as originally planned; they NOW are going to retrofit the second entrance a few years later.

HQ2 has been nothing more than a corporate shake down.

VRE has funded the Crystal City new station in their capital budget for 2020. Improvements at L'enfant are funded for 2019 and 2021.