The so-called Ford Site plan isn’t a plan, really, if by “plan” we might expect imagination, innovation, excitement and opportunity. Mixed-use housing and retail is a default switch, not a plan.

I am going to try again. I contacted Volkswagen of North America in late June. I had learned they were storing disabled cars in Brainerd because of its central United States location and good rail service. I pitched them on building their next new manufacturing plant at the Ford site. Volkswagen built a new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., in 2008. We should have been at that table. We knew Ford was phasing out.

It broke this past week that Amazon is asking cities whether they might be a prime location for its new second headquarters.

Pause for a moment. I heard that news on the radio driving into the newspaper Thursday morning, wondering as I drove why the westbound traffic on Highway 13 was backed up practically all the way to Smith Avenue. And then it dawned on me that the High Bridge is closed, closed for a year! That traffic nightmare is but a preview of what Highland Park residents fear will be the result of 7,000 or so new residents on the 122-acre Ford site.

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Amazon. Hmmm. I went to the Google and sure enough learned that Amazon is quite literally waiting to be courted by a city that can demonstrate that it would be a prime location for Amazon’s new $5 billion corporate campus. Yes, billion. The company said it plans to create 50,000 full-time jobs with the positions providing an average total compensation of $100,000 over the next 10 to 15 years.

The company said it would prefer to consider cities with more than 1 million in population in either urban or suburban locations with a potential to attract and retain strong technical talent.

For the love of God, isn’t that us? Yes, of course, I mean the metropolitan area with a population of comfortably more than a million people. Henry Ford loved that site. Jeff Bezos, the innovative Henry Ford of today, might very well like to follow in the footsteps of the corporate genius who preceded him.

It gets better. Amazon said its requirements necessitate a city with “a strong university system and a highly educated labor pool.’’ Count the colleges, anchored by the University of Minnesota.

Amazon estimates that investments in Seattle, its headquarters, between 2010 and 2016, added $38 billion to the city’s economy, or slightly more than another gaggle of coffee shops. Related Articles Soucheray: Defund the police! Wait, where’d the police go?

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Amazon has posted a link where cities and states that are interested in submitting a bid can gather more information. Cities have until Oct. 19 to submit their proposals, and Amazon expects to announce the new location next year.

I used to know some people at the Washington Post but that was a generation ago, and I have no one to call for the cellphone number of Jeff Bezos.

Will some local politician set aside for a moment the desperation to ban plastic bags and menthol cigarettes and please prepare an application? This is Amazon, not Bob’s Boat Anchors R Us. None of us can even imagine the technological innovation that will be embedded in that new facility. And if traffic is still feared by that number of new employees, I would imagine that by the time the headquarters is built Amazon will figure out a way to drone the employees to work or teleport them in.

Will some local politicians join the governor in pursuit of Amazon and start boasting about a magnificent building site and a talented and educated labor pool and a top-notch university system?

That plan on the table now is embarrassingly lame. It’s a default switch thrown by people who have stopped having big dreams and big ambitions for enriching thousands of new employees.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESPN.