DENVER -- Some of the mystery behind Colorado’s bid to become home to Amazon’s was revealed Thursday, as the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation released a redacted version of its proposal sent to Amazon.
Potential locations are not revealed in the document. Yet other cities have made sites public.
“It’s important to maintain confidentially related to real estate holdings and sites in any economic development transaction. We can’t speak to the approach of others, but we could severely impair negotiations and prices, both upward and downward, between potential buyers and sellers by identifying potential sites in advance,” said J.J. Ament, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. “It’s not the role of the Metro Denver EDC to manipulate the price of land—we could do so by making this information public.”
The submission reflects much of the reporting already done by Denver7 and The Denver Post after viewing hundreds of pages of documents obtained under the Colorado Open Records Act. Those documents showed a focus on quality of life and the ability to eventually hire 50,0000 people.
While Denver was atop a New York Times list for winning the deal, other studies have placed us lower.
"We feel that Amazon can be successful in a lot of places, but our proposal, we feel, has been laid out as such, that Colorado truly provides the best benefit from the investments we make—from talent, to global accessibility, to the way businesses are supported," said Sam Bailey of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.
And while the governor has raised questions about being in the Mountain time zone, the authors of the Colorado plan don’t see that as a deterrent.
“The fact is in Colorado you can do business in China on the same day you can do business in Germany, that we can connect to Asia and Europe on direct nonstop flights," Bailey said. "We think this is a global community where they can be successful regardless of time zone."
Amazon may reveal to Denver if it’s on a short list for consideration in January 2018.