Amazon’s planned move to Northern Virginia’s Crystal Cit … er, National Landingpromises to bring big-tech flavor to a region better known for big government and an abundance of nearby advocacy shops. And while the company is also putting a footprint on the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, its arrival on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., is likely to be acutely felt by many associations that call the area home.
What should they expect? Here are a few possible effects:
More competition. Amazon is expected to create tens of thousands of jobs and to generate an ecosystem in which other nearby tech companies follow suit, so the battle for talented employees will likely get tougher. Competition for business and personal space may heat up too: Amazon is widely expected drive up already-expensive real estate prices in the region, making both office space and housing harder to come by. Those trends might lead some organizations to look for homes in other nearby regions that didn’t get the nod from Amazon. Already, some cities within a day’s drive of Northern Virginia, such as Raleigh, North Carolina and Baltimore, are seeing ways to turn the HQ2 decision into a net positive.
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