National Landing just made a huge mistake.
L ots of major cities want to host the Olympics. And it rarely works out for them. Hosting the Olympics is almost always a boondoggle in the long run. And if you think that’s bad, imagine bidding on the rights to an Olympics that never ends.
Which is pretty much what happened to areas who opened up their treasuries ( and then some!) to Jeff Bezos in the hopes of securing the second Amazon headquarters. And Amazon, being diabolically clever (in addition to awesome) then decided to split this proposed HQ2 into an HQ2(a) and HQ2(b) in New York City and Northern Virginia—and with mini-HQ2(c-minor) going to Nashville. I suppose the middle of the country needed at least a figleaf, since nobody really thought that, when choosing among 200+ applicants, Amazon was going to put HQ2 in Manitoba, Tulsa, Missouri, or Ohio. “Pick us! The weather’s terrible, but at least we have affordable housing. For now!”
As the New York Times reports, this decision to split HQ2—which, let’s be honest, Amazon must have been planning from the start—has several virtues: “[It] will let the company tap into the labor markets of New York and Washington and retain bargaining power with two localities for decades.” Pure Bezosian genius, really: imposing a sort of permanent leverage over leaders in multiple locations who were already falling all over each other to give away as many of their goodies as possible. By splitting HQ2 in two, Amazon basically turned what was civic prostitution into just that, but without the pimp.
Former Obama press secretary Jay Carney, who has now cashed out of government and journalism for a job with Bezos, told the Times of the decision to split HQ2 in two: “We also think that 25,000 as a floor is easier for the communities to absorb.”
But how easy is that going to be?
For Northern Virginia, this is basically like adding a second Pentagon, which employs a similar number of employees in the region. And the Pentagon is only a mile or so away from the Arlington / Alexandria corridor that will be host to Bezos’s new digs. The presence of the Pentagon, with its per-diems and temporary placements, has already driven housing pricing above what would otherwise be normal.
And that’s just the start.
There are six major traffic corridors that flow through this area: The first is Washington’s long-suffering train system, Metro. Then there’s Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express. There’s also I-395, the major highway that connects points south with the District of Columbia. Connecting to that are U. S.-1, which flows straight through the area where HQ2A will reside, and the George Washington Parkway, which sits a quarter of a mile east and is operated by the National Park Service.
Amazon bulldozing and rebuilding Crystal City is going to make Washington’s traffic—already the 18th worst of any city in the world —an absolute nightmare. Are the train systems going to get better? Probably not. Virginia has already offered tax incentives of nearly a billion dollars. The District of Columbia and Maryland, losers both, are unlikely to jump at the opportunity to pour more of their residents’ dollars into a system already in a death spiral for the benefit of Virginia.
And then there’s the relatively new, and little-used, Bus Rapid Transit system on Route 1. The city of Alexandria instituted this scheme as part of what it called its “Vision Zero” plan to reduce to zero the number of “traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2028.” What it really is a system designed to increase traffic congestion: The Bus Rapid Transit lanes took over one-third of the Route 1 lanes and reduced the speed limit on the remaining lanes from 35 miles per hour to 25. The result: A three-mile stretch of near permanent congestion that bears an uncanny resemblance to the 101 in Los Angeles.
What’s already happening, pre-HQ2, is that people are diverting their routes to faster courses. Since the pinch point to get over the Potomac is right there, traffic will worsen as people avoid Route 1 and use the George Washington Parkway or 395. Or, in the case of Beltway outsiders (like yours truly), they’ll add to traffic on the Beltway and I-295 in Southeast D. C. and Maryland.
The crony capitalism gets worse. In addition to offering massive tax incentives to the one of the biggest companies in the history of the world, Amazon has convinced the Commonwealth of Virginia to give it advance notice of any relevant FOIA requests “to allow the Company to seek a protective order or other appropriate remedy.”
At that point, why not just sell the land, outright, to Jeff Bezos and let him make his own city with its own laws? Imagine Disney’s Celebration, Florida, but with Lord Bezos. I bet it would be pretty great. At any rate, it would be better than having the existing pols sell out their current constituents with the hopes of importing 25,000 new ones and pretending that everything about HQ2 is going to be awesome.
Because it isn’t.
Sure, my condo value might go up, the schools might get better, instead of having to wait in long lines at Costco, I can just go to one of Bezos’s amazing cashierless stores.
But my property taxes will also grow. And while I might enjoy these futuristic modernities, I doubt I’ll be able to take advantage of them much from my new home in Fredericksburg, where I’ll still be able to afford things. At least for a while.
