Apple Plans New Corporate Campus
All the city news you can use.
Apple Campus Photo by Lydia Fizz licensed under Creative Commons.
Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.
Dueling banjos: This week Amazon released a list of 20 cities that had made the cut in its search for a second headquarters. A day before the New York Times Amazon announcement, Apple announced that when its money was repatriated to the United States from foreign havens, it would look for a place to put a second campus as well. Why do I feel like searching for a new HQ is the new native advertising, and they really just want me to buy a phone or some socks? (Reuters – Apple) (New York Times – Amazon)
A history of light pole banners: Ever wonder where those banners advertising civic programs such as the zoo or the Museum of Fine Arts came from? They aren’t your typical billboard and seem to be everywhere in major cities. In fact, it all started with a picture of Babe Ruth on Chicago’s Miracle Mile in 1982. After the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, they were everywhere. (Curbed)
High end housing: A new housing plan called Live Denver is looking to provide housing for low income families by subsidizing vacant luxury housing units. Qualifying residents will pay up to 35 percent of their incomes toward rent, while the city of Denver picks up the rest. (Fast Company)
Mobility score: A new beta program to measure mobility called MobilityScore has been released, and Christopher Yuen at HumanTransit believes it’s an important step towards figuring out our actual mobility options. While older products like TransitScore only looked at access to the type of transit, MobilityScore looks at frequencies and other transport options. (Human Transit)
Warehouse land prices double: As more people in the United States come to expect goods to be delivered to their door within two days, land prices for the warehouses that make this turnaround possible have doubled between 2016 and 2017. The trend is expected to continue as more companies develop e-commerce programs. (ReCode)
Quote of the Week
“On its face, mapping galaxies has little to do with finding abandoned buildings. But deep down, Budavári says, they’re both essentially data problems, which require analyzing massive amounts of telltale signals to detect and draw patterns the human eye can’t easily see.”
-Issie Lapowski in Wired discussing astrophysicist Tamás Budavári attempt to suss out all of Baltimore’s abandoned buildings with data.
Want more links to read? Visit The Overhead Wire and signup. (http://dtrnsfr.us/2iA8Y).
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Milwaukee should do what Denver is doing. Force private housing contractors to build high end. Luxury apartments and nothing else. Since supply overwhelms demand for luxury housing. You would logically think prices for rents would fall. Not in Denver. Your a Starbucks Barista, and you can only afford $800 dollars on your new luxury pad. Congratulations, Denver taxpayers will cover the other $1200 a month
I agree. We don’t want poor people to live in nice places. Republican policies that keep poor people poor and in bad neighborhoods mean white people like me can safely raise a family. More of that please.
Why does Denver have 16,000 vacant luxury apartments? Clearly, it was the city alderman’s attempt to not build blue collar apartments. Free trolley rides, free MCTS rides anyone? Working people fleeced again. Maybe they can market them as pot homes.
Yes Troll the only explanation is anti-white discrimination.
Earth to Troll.
1. Why is the only construction–outside of welfare for Foxconn–going to residential housing?
1.1 Where are the potential tenants going to work to afford “luxury” apartments?
In Milwaukee–most urban areas–a “luxury” apartment makes as much sense as a “luxury” Ford Escort.
All things being equal, anyone–except the obscenely wealthy–who can afford “luxury” housing in an urban area wants a condominium. Property managers vastly prefer condominium owners, because they take better care of the property than tenants.
As more people move into a high rise, without robust public transportation–trolleys integrated with vastly improved busses–no one could find parking. The bigger problem, however, is that you can’t widen the streets. Without the trolley, there’s no way streets could absorb the massive increase in population density.
John, we have at least two failed TIF districts downtown, Grand avenue and intramodal. Boston store is bankruptcy yet the city subsidizes. We have the Moderne high rise backed on government loan. The Coulture is a high rise in limbo funded by the city. What have we lost from Foxconn?
Troll,
$4 billion so far.
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/12/21/murphys-law-foxconn-subsidy-now-exceeds-4-billion/
Troll,
At 12:05 today you wrote, “Milwaukee should do what Denver is doing. Force private housing contractors to build high end. Luxury apartments and nothing else.”
At 5:26 today you wrote, “We have the Moderne high rise backed on government loan. The Coulture is a high rise in limbo funded by the city.”
Do you see the problem?
John where in the state budget is there a line item that states a $4 billion dollar loss. Last I looked Walker cut my taxes again and Wisconsin keeps producing surpluses based on the state forcasts.
Troll,
You wrote, “we have at least two failed TIF districts downtown, Grand avenue and intramodal.”
Why is there insufficient consumer demand in Wisconsin to keep businesses in business?
Troll rails against corporate welfare all the time here but he’s pro-Foxconn. He’s a troll and a hypocrite.
Troll,
What taxes has Gov. Walker cut for you? Please be specific. You can’t own a vehicle. You’d know how bad the roads are.
Are you accusing Gov. Walker of welching on his welfare for Foxconn? What’s wrong with Bruce’s reporting? Be specific.
“State faces $2.2 billion deficit heading into 2015-17 budget cycle”
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/state-faces-billion-deficit-heading-into—budget-cycle/article_5a3d6933-5937-5b23-8cd7-3bc16bf07edb.html
State budget has to balance, “just like a family’s.”
Add $4 billion, the deficit goes north of $6 billion.
Add to that that such a high percentage of private sector workers need food stamps and Medicaid, because their wages are so low.
PMD,
Well said.
He wants socialism for the elites, austerity for everyone else.
Troll and other right-wingers here have blasted the $250 million for the new bucks arena since the day it was announced but they fully support $4 billion for Foxconn. They are a joke.
Troll, yes Denver had about 16,000 vacant apartments as of June 2017, but that’s for the entire 6-county metro Denver area (not just the City of Denver) and not just luxury apartments. And on a percentage basis (those 6 counties have 330,000 apartments), it works out to about a 5% vacancy rate. Metro Denver is building about 9,000 new apartments annually.
As to your claim that a Starbucks barista would have to pay $2,000/month for an apartment in Denver, that just isn’t true (unless that barista needs 3 bedrooms—the average rent for a 3-BR apartment was under $2,000—3 people sharing a 3BR apartment for under $700 each).
You can see the stats here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vz6H4k4SESQjNfMHcySlQ2UVk/view