Amazon's HQ2: Now we know why Cincinnati didn't get it

Greater Cincinnati lost its bid for Amazon's coveted second headquarters for one main reason — a lack of tech talent.

That's according to economic development officials who Monday told The Enquirer that they were part of a conference call last week in which Amazon officials offered a long-awaited post-mortem on the region's failed bid for the so-called Amazon HQ2.

The Seattle-based online retail giant in January selected 20 finalists to house its planned new $5 billion headquarters from a list of 238 bidders from across the United States and Canada.

Amazon has pledged to create up to 50,000 high-paying jobs at the new facility, which will generate billions of dollars in annual economic impact for the community lucky enough to land it.

While the Cincinnati area has made strides in creating tech jobs, according to Amazon, the pool of computer programmers, software developers and other high-tech workers was simply too shallow to meet its demands.

"At the end of the day, their feedback was that talent was the most important factor out of everything they looked at,'' said Ed Loyd, a spokesman for REDI Cincinnati, which put together a regional bid for Amazon's HQ2 that included communities in Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and Dayton, Ohio.

REDI, or the Regional Economic Development Initiative, is the economic development arm of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber. It's focus is on bringing jobs and development to a 15-county region, including Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.

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'The best let-down meeting I ever had'

According to a Brookings Institution report last year, Cincinnati ranked No. 27 out of 30 metropolitan areas with the largest increase in tech jobs from 2013-2015.

Meanwhile, other peer cities that made Amazon's list of finalists ranked significantly higher in the Brookings report, inlcuding Indianapolis, No. 15, and Pittsburgh, No. 18.

Still, Amazon was encouraging and complimentary, commending the area for its quality of life and pace of development, including revitalization efforts in Over-the-Rhine and The Banks development along the Ohio River.

"It was the best let-down meeting I ever had,'' Johnna Reeder, REDI president and CEO, told the Enquirer's editorial board Monday.

'We need to have a plan'

While other cities may be "further out of the gate,'' Loyd said, Amazon encouraged local development officials to continue moving along their current trajectory.

"REDI is only four years old. We haven't been working at these issues as long as some of these other communities have,'' Loyd said. "We need to make sure we continue building that pipeline for future tech talent in the community. But what we have here is great. The vision is right.''

In addition to tech talent, another deficit in the Cincinnati area's bid for Amazon was the region's transportation infrastructure, which many observers had speculated could be the area's biggest shortcoming.

Pouring salt in the wound, Amazon's list of finalist include a number of peer cities that may have even worse transportation infrastructures.

The difference?

"What differentiated us from other mid-sized cities was they had a plan, budget and timeline to address the gaps,'' Loyd said. "We need to have a plan, budget and timeline together, too, so that we ensure that we're not going to be passed by as a region.''