Could Ambler be a Home for Amazon’s Second Headquarters?

Amazon was all over the news today due to its announcement that it is seeking proposals from developers, communities, redevelopment authorities, counties, states, etc., to propose a location to be the home of its second corporate headquarters it plans to open on the North American continent. It currently has a headquarters in Seattle and this second location will be on equal footing with that office.

From the press release:

Amazon expects to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs. In addition to Amazon’s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community. Amazon is opening the Amazon HQ2 Request for Proposal (“RFP”) now, and local and state government leaders interested in learning more about how they can bring Amazon to their community can visit www.amazon.com/amazonHQ2.

There is huge competition between locales when a factory is seeking a home and will produce 100 jobs. Now imagine the competition that is going to take place trying to land an employer promising to add 50,000 jobs in a community.

Should Ambler be considered? We read through the proposal and the biggest strike against Ambler is that it doesn’t have the necessary existing buildings to rehab or approved buildings that could be built in time for Phase 1 of the development that commences in 2019.

The biggest undeveloped property is also the BoRit Superfund site, which comes with all of the asbestos issues. A large portion of this site also is in Whitpain.

While this opportunity appears to be something that wouldn’t work in Ambler, it would have been interesting to see how it would have transformed Ambler and the surrounding communities.

Is being the home of a large corporation something you would ever want to see happen in Ambler? Let us know in the comments.