Article in Post-Gazette about possible Amazon HQ2 Sites

[Jim K.]

At the risk of being accused of doing a volte-face about the prospects of the area, there's an article in the Post-Gazette today about Amazon visiting several specific places in the area: the Strip District, the Hazelwood Green site, the lower Hill District, the Carrie in Rankin, and the airport site.

It made me think for a minute. The Carrie site is a really interesting space for a large variety of possible tech occupants, especially if the revitalized Pinkerton's Landing Bridge (not sure of the status of this, I know the county was doing a study last year) gives it immediate road access to the Waterfront and all the A-class luxury housing built into the development. In addition to the kind of road access that could be built in from I-376 coming out of the tunnel as well as S. Braddock Ave, there's also bus access from the MLK Busway. The site itself is huge, even considering the considerable space the Carrie takes up on it. It would be an exceptional testing areas for robotics and drones. Of course it has, well, the Carrie, a historic, omnipresent symbol of American technological excellence. Here's the last thing I saw in my research: Allegheny County owns the site, straight-up. Rich Fitzgerald will offer a lease personally at whatever favorable terms he wants, and no third parties will have a real say.

If it's not going to be Amazon, that site is most definitely going to be someone else. We'd probably all be better off if it was some Carnegie Mellon University robotics or drone tech company that needs the space for on-site testing. I really hadn't looked at the Carrie site carefully until today.