A Maine Racetrack Didn’t Lure Amazon. Multiply That Disappointment by 218.<br />“When they rolled this idea out, the narrow description they used really only defined about 30 cities,” said Mr. Phillips of Day 1, referring<br />to how Amazon had said it was looking for a metropolitan area in North America with at least a million people, among other criteria.<br />Amazon, he said, “wants to get the highest bid and highest subsidy possible, so now the 20 finalist cities will go revise their bids.”<br />“From a local point of view, it looks like job creation in your community,” Mr. Rolnick added.<br />The simplicity of the application process, which involved answering nine questions, providing data<br />and touting the city, “encouraged us and several hundred others who did not have a viable chance to make the strongest possible argument why it should be us,” said Mr. Hall, the town manager.<br />“I’m certainly disappointed,” said Scott Phillips, who ran a development team called Day 1<br />that promoted a proposal to build an entirely new 50-square-mile city for Amazon between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, equidistant from each.<br />“This new headquarters is merely a stop on their road to global conquest,” Mr. Hall said.<br />An Amazon spokesman said, “All the cities received direct communication from Amazon, including many personal phone calls.”<br />Many of the other also-rans did not want to talk.<br />Mr. Phillips of Day 1 said he had gotten a receipt from Federal Express for delivering his proposal in October and never heard from Amazon after that.<br />“Very disappointed,” said the Bay Area Council, which had submitted a bid on behalf of San Francisco and four neighboring cities.<br />Mr. Hall said he had received “no word whatsoever” from Amazon about the fate of his application.
