Interesting News & Observer op-ed from former N&O columnist Nicole Brodeur, who now makes her living in Seattle, where Amazon’s “urban campus” employs 40,000 people.
Should Raleigh land Amazon’s HQ2, capital city residents best be prepared to take the bad with the good, Brodeur warns:
Since Amazon went from a bookstore Jeff Bezos started in his garage to an international retail and entertainment giant, Seattle is feeling like Seymour in “Little Shop of Horrors.” That little plant we nurtured has grown into an open maw that is swallowing everything, including our soul – and giving us plenty of traffic in which to sit and ponder what we never saw coming.
The Triangle has had its share of growth and change. I was part of the onslaught of Yankees and outsiders who moved to Raleigh in the 1990s, when the area was exploding. I only stayed for four years, but it was long enough to see the toll it took on people who had long called Carolina home and wondered where their sense of place went.
The last decade of Amazon has brought that same feeling to Seattle, but on steroids.
….In the day-to-day, the kind of growth Amazon has brought means you can’t just do things anymore. You have to leave early. Buy your tickets in advance. Scheme.
And you have to adjust. That little bar you go to every Thursday night? It’s suddenly packed, and they’ve raised the prices. Or they’re closing, and there’s an apartment building planned.
So enjoy your beloved little landmarks like The Player’s Retreat in Raleigh while they’re there.
Add a good dose of liberal politics to this craziness and you get—-wait for it–homelessness at an all time high. That’s always good for a city. As for my hometown Raleigh–in my opinion it’s already on steroids— I simply can’t imagine shooting more juice into the veins of the former sleepy government city in which I grew up. But hey, I don’t live there–I just visit–thank goodness….
