EXTRA: Amazon to Chgo – Forget it?

If it's true, will it be governor or speaker ...

There are many municipalities across the nation, including Chicago and even nearby Gary, Ind., banking their economic futures on being able to sway Amazon.com to build their proposed second corporate headquarters building within their city limits.

The Boston Globe reported that it has learned of ongoing talks to lease 500,000 square feet of offices in a Boston neighborhood that already has many other tech companies located there.

... who takes the blame for Amazon loss?

THE LEASE ALSO would have options to double the amount of space in the future. Which the newspaper points out would be enough space for the early phases of the corporate structure Amazon.com wants to build somewhere to supplement their existing headquarters in Seattle.

Would this make an announcement that Boston will be the site of Amazon.com’s dream campus an inevitable event? Can we forget the talk of an Amazon campus being built somewhere along the north branch of the Chicago River? Or at the site of the one-time Michael Reese Hospital? Or anywhere in northwest Indiana or St. Louis (with gubernatorial help)?

And will we soon be getting overdoses of the cheap political rhetoric about how our state’s unsettling partisanship scared off Amazon from even thinking of Illinois?

Will talk of turning the one-time downtown Post Office become yet another Chicago fantasy that never will be?

Which, of course, leads to the next topic of political debate. Who’s to blame – Gov. Bruce Rauner, or Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan! As if we don’t argue that point enough on so many other issues.

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