Even if Pittsburgh fails to land Amazon’s HQ2, it already has emerged as a winner, at least in the eyes of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.
The competition for the coveted economic development prize has helped to highlight the region’s strengths and prompted other companies to put Pittsburgh on their own short lists, he said Tuesday.
“I think it’s been a good exercise in a lot of ways,” Mr. Fitzgerald related during a speech sponsored by the Pittsburgh Technology Council at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel & Suites, Downtown.
He noted that many handicappers have listed Pittsburgh as one of the finalists for the Amazon second headquarters, creating positive publicity for a region still trying to shed its smoky steel town image.
In fact, GeekWire, a national technology news site based in Seattle, announced Tuesday that it has chosen Pittsburgh over Cincinnati, Denver, and Raleigh as its “temporary HQ2” for February. Its reporters will spend the month writing about “Pittsburgh’s amazing transformation into a world leader in the innovation economy.”
Publicity around the hunt for Amazon’s second headquarters town also has spurred other companies to take a look at the Steel City, Mr. Fitzgerald said. He didn’t name any, but said most are tech companies.
“We’re still in discussions with them. They’re very much interested [in Pittsburgh],” he said after the event, adding announcements could come early next year.
The county executive is by no means conceding the race for Amazon HQ2. To the contrary, he said he believes Pittsburgh has a “really, really good chance” of coming out on top.
Strengths he cited include the region’s tech pipeline, with Carnegie Mellon University leading the way. He said many CMU grads now work for the e-commerce giant, a situation that can only help Pittsburgh.
“We got a lot of folks embedded in Amazon that really like Pittsburgh,” he said.
With a good quality of life, including lower housing costs than some bigger cities, the region, Mr. Fitzgerald said, has the ability to attract people to work at HQ2, which could create up to 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment over 17 years.
“On the affordability aspect, we rank up there very, very high because you still can buy a pretty decent house in Pittsburgh,” he said. “I like to say the $250,000 house that you can buy in Pittsburgh costs about $800,000 in Boston or Washington, D.C., or Seattle.”
Because of its industrial past, the region also has an abundance of sites large enough to accommodate the size of the headquarters Amazon is contemplating. Among those that have been submitted for consideration are the 178-acre former LTV Coke Works site in Hazelwood and the 168-acre former Carrie Furnace site in Swissvale and Rankin.
“Right now, we’re kind of in a good spot where there are parcels — and those are just two of many that are out there — that put us in a really, really good position,” he said.
Among other strengths he listed were the region’s ability to work together and its capacity to grow, noting the county’s population is now about 1.2 million compared to 1.6 million in 1970. That capacity to grow here should enable Pittsburgh to handle HQ2 without it “being too disruptive,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.
The HQ2 bidding process identified some shortcomings. One was solved when Pittsburgh International Airport landed a flight to Seattle, which is scheduled to start next September.
“We had a problem. We had a deficit in our proposal. We were missing one thing, a flight to Seattle, and we solved it,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Another is transit. “I’m not totally happy where our transit system is,” he said. “We’re going to change that.”
He is hoping the Port Authority’s new CEO, Katharine Eagan Kelleman, will do the same for transit as Christina Cassotis, the airport authority’s CEO, has done for Pittsburgh International.
Mr. Fitzgerald is expecting Amazon to narrow the 238 proposals it has received for HQ2 to a short list, one that he, of course, believes Pittsburgh will make.
And just as the Seahawks football team has its 12th man in Seattle in its fans, Pittsburgh may have its own version there. Mr. Fitzgerald learned during a visit in the fall that the city on the West Coast houses five Steelers bars.
“I can tell you when I went there the affection for their hometown is still extremely strong. They’re rooting for us,” he said.
Mark Belko: mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262.
First Published: December 13, 2017, 11:44 a.m.
