Lamont to Bezos: Stamford is perfect for Amazon
Days after Amazon announced it was exiting its massive plan for a headquarters in Queens, Gov. Ned Lamont made an enthusiastic and aggressive pitch, dripping in his trademark optimism, to Jeff Bezos, CEO of the online retailer, for a company headquarters in Stamford.
In the 10-page February 11 memo, obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media, Lamont outlines the ways Stamford could meet Amazon’s needs and acknowledges the state’s initial proposal wasn’t enough to woo the company.
Showing candor, Lamont makes clear the state is looking to finally put an end to an era marred by the departure of General Electric’s headquarters and the downturn in financial services.
“The citizens of Connecticut are hungry for the future,” Lamont wrote. “There is no doubt that the decline of the financial services industry after 2008, coupled with the slow decline of industrial powerhouses like GE, has hurt the state and its residents. Rather than wallowing in the past, though, the people of Connecticut are eager to capitalize on any opportunity to re-establish the state as the envy of the region and the country.”
On Feb. 8, as soon as the Washington Post — owned by Bezos — reported the Queens move was on the rocks, Lamont tweeted, “we mobilized our new Partnership to Advance the Connecticut of Tomorrow” to lure Amazon. That was a Friday and he sent the memo the following Monday.
There’s no indication Amazon has responded to Lamont or shown any interest in Stamford — the only city Lamont is pushing — and in fact, the Seattlebased company has indicated it won’t try to replace the Long Island City, Queens plan with another huge location.
But the pitch provides a detailed look at the lengths Lamont is willing to reach to attract a top employer to the state.
“Amazon will be welcomed with not just open arms but with the Yankee enthusiasm and ingenuity that makes this state so very special,” he wrote. “Our people believe that the state’s businesses are our ‘customer’ and Amazon will feel like our very best customer from the first day HQ2 arrives.”
In ‘the tax payer’s shoes’
“My administration has been re-engineering many of the state’s agencies and services from the tax payer’s shoes,” Lamont tells Bezos in a letter accompanying the memo.
It’s a line that likely will make his Republican opponents roll their eyes. His proposed state budget, plus his plans for highway tolls and his support for paid family and medical leave, amount to $1.9 billion per year in tax and fee increases.
But the governor has made clear in the first three months of his administration that he is, at least, taking a different approach to many aspects of state government. That’s the entrepreneurial spirit he hopes will appeal to Bezos.
Lamont added that the changes are “better aligning government to their requested outcomes — results oriented and measured by real data and metrics.”
He noted, “In line with that results oriented approach, if you are re-evaluating the selection of Long Island City, then Stamford, CT ... offers the space you need on day one, the room you need to grow, and the amenities a workforce of Amazon’s caliber expects.”
The letter makes clear Stamford is the only site Lamont is pitching, as opposed to the state’s original proposal, which offered Stamford and greater Hartford as separate entries. Other cities, including Danbury, Enfield and the combination of Bridgeport and New Haven, submitted bids without the state’s blessing.
Lamont includes a detailed imagining — and asks Bezos to imagine with him — of Stamford in the year 2030 with Amazon as the primary tenant in the “City that Works” and is the state’s top employer.
“Connecticut understands Amazon’s Metro New York interest and embraces that with this strategy,” Lamont wrote, emphasizing his own experience launching a business. “Entrepreneurs apply what they learn, which is why our proposal is demonstrably better than our initial submissions.”
A two-state solution
Connecticut’s original pitch, submitted in 2017, didn’t make the top 20 as the Seattle-based company searched for the perfect location for its second headquarters. The lack of a major airport in Fairfield County could have been a factor, as both of the chosen places were virtually on top of international airports.
While Bezos and Amazon ultimately settled on two locations for HQ2 — one outside Washington, D.C. in Crystal City, Virignia, and the other in Long Island City, Queens — many New Yorkers, prodded by leftleaning politicians, weren’t keen on welcoming the online retailer.
In Lamont’s Feb. 8 tweet, he said he’d asked former PepsiCo chair and CEO Indra Nooyi to help “construct a path forward” on attracting Amazon to Connecticut — specifically the City that Works.
By the end of February, Nooyi was named to Amazon’s board of directors, though it’s unlikely Lamont knew that appointment was in the works.
Nooyi also co-chairs the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, a nonprofit corporation that has teamed up with the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development to improve the state’s business climate — specifically by wooing new businesses to Connecticut.
On that same Friday, Joe McGee, vice president of the Business Council of Fairfield County, worked the phones — and took calls from people with the same idea — to formulate a creative two-state bid that still included New York.
“The Bronx and Fairfield County. Who would ever put that marriage together? They want to grow, and we’re all on the New Haven rail line,” McGee told Hearst columnist Dan Haar at the time. “Let’s be crazy and talk about a two-state solution.”
Lamont stops short of any financial promises for Amazon, but includes a detailed imagining of what life could be like “4,000 day ones from now.” He concludes the memo by promising “to present a more detailed proposal to you at your earliest convenience.”
But in the mean time, picture this, he asked Bezos:
“The year is 2030. Amazon chose to locate its HQ2 in Stamford in 2019. Now, the company lies at the epicenter of a virtually borderfree region, situated in the midpoint of the Northeast mega-region, that ‘city’ which stretches from the shores of the Potomac to the banks of the Charles. With seamless transportation, a vibrant and diverse workforce, as well as an ecosystem of startups, large enterprises and non-profits populated by a highly mobile workforce of people focused on the knowledge economy, Stamford has become a truly world-class city.”
It is a vision that forms the core of Lamont’s agenda for Connecticut, as he talks about creating an infrastructure for forward-looking businesses, rather than attracting companies dealby-deal.
“With Amazon’s bold decision, the company got in on the ground floor of the renaissance of a city and a state that are once again the envy of their neighbors. Through the company’s deep involvement in the early days of that renaissance back in 2019, Amazon helped to spark that renaissance, and is forever known as the Anchor Tenant of the New Connecticut.”