John Portman and Associates recognized for participating the design of Amazon’s HQ2

John Portman and Associates recognized for participating in Amazon’s new HQ2!

“Renderings: Amazon HQ2 ideas that could have reshaped Atlanta’s skyline. From the airport to MARTA’s Arts Center Station, these concepts didn’t lack ambition. For better or worse, it didn’t pan out in the end, but Atlanta’s courting of Amazon’s $5 billion HQ2 proposal wasn’t lacking imagination—and considerable carrots of cash.

Pitches compiled for the e-commerce giant, which are now public, present metro Atlanta as a business-friendly, diverse, globally connected “tech mecca” with culture that would appeal to HQ2’s 50,000 employees. And the documents are rich in revelations.

For example: two green-space ideas were floated for capping sections of the Connector in Midtown alone; the Quarry Yards project in Grove Park received top billing alongside Midtown, downtown, and Old Fourth Ward; the “Stitch” concept was a contender after all; and non-intown sites such as Lockheed/Dobbins in Cobb County, Duluth’s Infinite Energy Center, and what was described as the “Georgia Aerotropolis Corridor” were bandied for Amazon bigwigs.

Total incentives for Amazon would have reached almost $2 billion eventually and included ideas such as renamed streets (hello, Kindle Road), an “Airport Experience Center” for employees, a $161 million “Amazon Academy of Georgia,” and possibly a MARTA car dedicated to moving Amazon’s goods around Atlanta traffic, as the Atlanta Business Chronicle relays. 

What’s more, the HQ2-exacerbated changes to Atlanta’s built environment could have been pronounced in places across the city, as the following roundup illustrates…”

https://atlanta.curbed.com/2018/11/14/18095351/ama…

Credits: Curbed Atlanta; Carter; and Majestic