General Business Updates and News

[danbrotherston]

An excellent point was made on twitter about why this project doesn't fly in almost any city: it's for 50,000 jobs. Look at how Waterloo pillories politicians for erecting condo towers, with massive fear about even Sixo's sub-1000 unit projection. Toronto similarly balks at proposals that involve more than one tower, or are anywhere outside University/Yonge/Harbourfront/Bloor. 50,000 new units will be a very hard sell in any city that doesn't have Houston-like abdication of zoning (and then the environmental risks we saw in the last week, let alone traffic costs, can similarly torpedo those options). I realize there would be some level of siphoning off of local talent, but even if you took every tech worker in Waterloo Region you still couldn't supply that office (let alone would you win an argument for bending over for Amazon in order to take away all the employees of existing businesses in a chaotic wash).

I wouldn't focus on the 50k number much.  Day 1 won't see 50k, day 3000 probably won't see 50k either.  It took them 23 years to grow to this size in Seattle, even if their growth rate is double (which is damn hard to do at scale), it's in the 10+ years timeframe.  They're looking for room to grow and a technical population to draw on (and apparently some fat tax breaks).

I would think Waterloo Region should be somewhat competitive on lower existing density and real-estate costs to start with.  If HSR and GO Transit plans were more in stone, I would expect that would give them the confidence they'd have enough population to draw on.  But I'm sure there are many places in a similar situation around the continent.  Or maybe there aren't....who knows.