The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

By now you’ve heard the news: Amazon has announced plans to create a second headquarters outside Seattle and Gomorrah’s gridlocked environs. Needless to say this has set off a bidding frenzy for who can offer the most tax reductions, the best qualified personnel and the most advantageous living conditions for Amazon’s elite management team bent on taking over the entire world.

And what major metropolitan city in this country or somewhere else wouldn’t want to claim that citadel of power as their own economic engine? Who wouldn’t want property values to shoot through the roof in the first year, doubling or even tripling the price of a modest home and swelling the tax base? Who wouldn’t want rental prices doing the same, forcing the undesirable poor to move somewhere far outside their upscale neighborhoods? And who wouldn’t want to jumpstart their transportation system by injecting thousands upon thousands of Amazonians bent on reaching headquarters by train, by bus, by self-driving automobiles? No, the bids and the proposals are already pouring in the very first week of the retailing Godzilla’s announcement.

Here on the South End we have our own pitch, one we think may just carry the day. Admittedly we don’t have much transportation infrastructure, just a two lane blacktop that loops around the end of the island. And housing opportunities are, well, a bit Spartan and okay, mostly non-existent. Plus, qualified personnel and high tech training programs are what we could charitably call nascent, but actually are fairly non-existent, although Stanwood is building a fine new high school . I guess we could offer tax incentives. No B&O taxes, possibly forever. And gifts for the executives. You know, free crab. All the crab they can eat. Anytime they want it. We’ll even crack it for them.

What we really have to offer — and we think they’ll see the wisdom in this — is the chance to start at Ground Level, no impediments, no necessity to sweep aside the existing infrastructures, just a Fresh Clean Start. Sounds good to us too! Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Amazonia? We think you could do it here on the blank slate of the South End. Think about it, but not too long. Tyee Store may be expanding soon, pretty tough competition down here, and they may not roll over the way Whole Foods did, Mr. Bezos.

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