Definitely not a super-villain.
That much we covered yesterday. Here’s another wrinkle: The Corporate Headquarters Campus. Just last week, definitely-not-a-super-villain Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon.com would be building a second headquarters – don’t scratch your either of your heads raw over that impossibility – in a city less afflicted with Seattletude.
I’m inferring that last part, but it’s hard to see what Amazon gains from Seattle: It can do business anywhere, but the future of the company is educated back east, nowhere near the soggy Sound.
Plus which, I think every huge real estate development should be built my way, over a mall, because giant structures chock full of people need decent retail – while that retail is able to prosper because it has a built-in client base. Big duh, huh?
And, accordingly, the coolest thing of all would be for Bezos to build his new corporate headquarters campus my way: As a mall-rooted mini-city, with residential, hotel and office towers all built into the mix. Amazon can house many of its own employees and business partners, even as it proves that it can kill at belly-to-belly retail, too.
And of course I have a location in mind: The Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem, NH. Doesn’t have to be that spot, but it’s ownable big dirt with excellent freeway access. That part of New Hampshire is essentially a suburb of the 495 tech belt, and everything that way is fed out of MIT and the Harvard School of Business – Cambridge talent with New Hampshire government. In other words, Unseattle.
How do you sell relocation to the folks you don’t plan to fire? “Better skiing. Kinder women. Lower taxes.”
Works for me. Why not build a “second headquarters” for MIT while you’re about it?
What do you call it when you congregate genius? Scenius.
That’s a good name for a brand new mega-mall-of-the-mind: Scenius.
Maybe I’ll see you there soon.
