by

Fred Swift

Hamilton County Reporter 

(NOTE: This is a commentary written by Fred Swift of the Hamilton County Reporter. The views expressed are those of Fred Swift and do not necessarily reflect the views of LarryInFishers.com.  This opinion piece is posted here as part of a partnership between the Reporter and LarryInFishers.com) 

For better or worse, it just could be Hamilton County that attracts the much publicized Amazon’s second national headquarters. We stress could be, but still far from a certainty.

The retail giant last week narrowed its search for a location to 20 sites
including central Indiana. Folks in the Indianapolis media say that if the area is
selected there are five most promising places for the billion dollar complex, two
of which are in this county.

One possible site is east of Noblesville between State Road 38 and Interstate
69 where an as yet unidentified buyer is in the process of securing options
on several thousand acres of farmland. With offers to pay as much as $40,000 per
acre, you can assume the mysterious person or group is not planning to
grow soybeans.

The other county site is Metropolitan Airport property
north of 96th Street, south and east of the airport. It is ground that is
not needed for airport operations and has long been seen as a prime location
for business or commercial development.

Both these locations are close to I-69. Amazon is known to want easy access
to interstate highways and an airport.

Last fall in this column we speculated on the possibility that someone
saw at least the possibility of landing a giant distribution center, hence the
optioning of big acreage in Wayne and Fall Creek Townships. The purchase
of large tracts of land by anonymous buyers for a big development is not unheard
of. In the 1950s the Indianapolis Water Company quietly bought 3,000 acres north of Noblesville.

We know the site today as Morse Reservoir and the subdivisions surrounding
it. The Noblesville Ledger eventually figured out what the land was to be used for.

It’s hard to visualize what an Amazon headquarters would look like with 50,000 employees, hundreds of thousands of square feet under roof and constant truck traffic coming and going at such a gigantic complex.

Many political leaders would see it as the greatest thing that could be
imagined. Jobs, jobs, jobs and presumably reasonably high paying jobs. Of
course, Hamilton County has very low unemployment so the employees
would likely come mostly from surrounding counties. Nearby Madison County has been hurting for years since the closing of major manufacturing plants there. Jobs within a few miles would no doubt be welcome.

Then, we must think of what would be needed to service Amazon. Major
road improvements, sewer and water utilities, public safety personnel
and schools. Most major industries expect a community to provide incentives
such as property tax abatement.

We’d be getting ahead of ourselves to consider all this, but local government
might have to do some calculations to see that some of the costs would not fall
on current residents. It may well not happen, but it’s never a bad idea to think
about all the ramifications, good and not so good of any possibility.