Amazon spells out its ‘City Maker’ role in reshaping Seattle

Few companies can transform a city, but Amazon, the slayer of the retail industry, isn’t just any company. It’s a “City Maker.” In its request for proposals for municipalities to bid to become the home for its second headquarters, Amazon AMZN, +1.21% claims to have done wonders for Seattle, its current home. Here’s how it breaks down the numbers in its request for proposals: • In addition to the 40,000 workers in its employ, another 53,000 jobs, by the company’s calculation, have been created elsewhere in the city thanks to Amazon’s direct investments. • Some $38 billion in additional investments from 2010 through 2016 in Seattle are attributable to Amazon’s own investments. It says every dollar spent by Amazon has generated another $1.40 for the local economy. • The personal income of non-Amazon employees has risen $17 billion in that same period thanks to Amazon, according to the company. (Its own payroll from 2010 to June 2017 totals $25.7 billion.) • Annual hotel nights booked by visiting “Amazonians” and guests total 233,000. • Amazon credits itself as a “catalyst for development” in downtown Seattle, with an abundance of restaurants, services and coffee shops having spring up, and redevelopment of South Lake Union and Denny Triangle also associated with its sustainable buildings and open spaces. And that “City Maker” label? Bestowed on the company just this year by the Downtown Seattle Association. Seattle is the fastest-growing big city in the country, according to Census Bureau data, adding an average of 57 people a day, or nearly 21,000 in a year. Some critics believe the runaway economic growth that companies like Amazon and Google bring to their metro areas isn’t always helpful. See: Home price gains were hot in June as Seattle sizzled, Case-Shiller says Home prices in Seattle have been growing at a double-digit annual rate for over a year. In California’s Silicon Valley, that tech hub nonpareil, so many workers are struggling to afford housing that Alphabet GOOGL, +0.84%, the parent company of Google, said in June it would buy hundreds of prefabricated modular houses. Read on: Here are the cities that meet the criteria for Amazon’s second headquarters