The high-tech, yet unsuccessful, pitch Baltimore made for Amazon’s $5 billion HQ2 featured virtual reality, an interactive website, a video that showed an upscale work space, sunrise yoga at the Inner Harbor, cocktails at the Sagamore Pendry and a magazine that boasted: “Amazon + Baltimore: Building the American City of Tomorrow.”
It was unveiled Wednesday during a 45-minute event at City Garage with a tinge of both disappointment and optimism — and a pledge to use it all again to attract other business ventures to Baltimore.
“Baltimore had to do this work anyway,” said Tom Geddes, CEO of Plank Industries, the umbrella group that includes Sagamore Development Co., a joint owner of Port Covington where the city was trying to lure HQ2. “We just got it done in five weeks.”
With Sagamore and the Baltimore Development Corp. leading the charge, the bid was made public nearly four months after the Oct. 19 deadline set by the internet retail giant to submit plans to its Seattle headquarters for a second North American headquarters.