New Mexico Economic Development Secretary Matt Geisel said the state submitted a proposal to Amazon on Wednesday that included proposals from Albuquerque and Doña Ana County.
“We all submitted it together. It went in in one package,” said Geisel in an interview with Albuquerque Business First on Friday.
He said the state followed Amazon’s nationally publicized RFP directions exactly and that the proposal was FedExed to the retail giant’s Seattle headquarters. Amazon put out an RFP for its second headquarters, which could reach 8 million square feet in office space and could eventually employ up to 50,000 workers.
He said the submitted proposal includes an introduction to the state, then splits off into discussing specific aspects such as workforce for cities such as Albuquerque and the Los Santos bi-national community, which includes Las Cruces. He said the proposal also included entities the state wanted to promote that were outside of those metropolitan areas, such as New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in south central New Mexico.
“Coming together for a state-level response, we’re fulfilling a request in the RFP,” said Geisel.
Though cities have been the focus of news coverage around Amazon’s HQ2, Amazon’s RFP encourages “states, provinces and metro areas to coordinate with relevant jurisdictions” to submit one RFP and that the RFP may contain “multiple real estate sites in more than one jurisdiction.”
Geisel said submitting one proposal with multiple sites offered as potential headquarters throughout the state also gave New Mexico a chance to tell a better story than one city or region could. He said submitting one proposal also ensured there would not be redundancy from cities in the state when referring to its specific workforce development programs.
“It’s easier for the reader, so I’m not reading about JTIP [Job Training Incentive Program] in two different proposals. I’m reading about them once and then I’m looking at the assets of each community,” Geisel said.
He said he was particularly proud that the state was able to submit one proposal with the help of Albuquerque Economic Development, Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance, the city of Albuquerque, the Sandoval Economic Alliance, Valencia County and the NM Partnership.
“Our team really came together and said OK. It required commitment, collaboration and in some cases compromise,” he said.
Davin Lopez, president and CEO of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance, said MVEDA and the Border Industrial Association in Santa Teresa put together a website that highlights how Amazon could reach a 2.7 million-person market with the region as its next HQ2.
“We feel we all worked very well with the state of New Mexico in this submission process and believe this provides the state with additional opportunity,” Lopez said of the site.
By: Rachel Sapin (ABQ Bussiness First)
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