Originally Posted: May 21, 2018
Last week, Arlington provided the first, substantive look at what any local city still in the running to secure Amazon’s massive HQ2 project has been willing to offer in terms of incentives.
On Tuesday, Arlington announced its bid to lure the online retail giant, and its promised initial investment of $5 billion and the creation of 50,000 jobs, is “no longer moving forward in the selection process.”
Along with its announcement, the city released the long list of economic incentivesit was prepared to offer Amazon – $921 million in what Arlington called “performance-based incentives.”
Among the primary incentives were:
– 100 percent real and business personal property tax abatement for a 10-year period
– Waiver of building and impact fees
– A land and infrastructure grant to assist with redeveloping the site
– Creation of a Municipal Management District
Dr. Cullum Clark, the Director of the Southern Methodist University Economics Research Center, noted that he was not surprised to see the long list of economic incentives that Arlington offered to Amazon. But he stressed that he is surprised to see that, given the list, Arlington is already out of the running.
“The Arlington deal was incredibly sweet [for Amazon]. I would be a little concerned, frankly, about giving up so much tax revenue from what would be the biggest employer in town for so very long,” Dr. Cullum said. “I would think it would go down as one of the sweetest deals a corporation has ever gotten had these exact terms actually gone into effect.” READ MORE