City gives Amazon $100K transportation loan

The City of Baltimore gave Amazon millions of dollars in tax benefits to open a massive new distribution hub on Broening Highway. Now that the “fulfillment center” is providing jobs and one-hour delivery, it appears the city is about to open its wallet once again.
The City is set to provide a $100,000 loan to the company, according to the Board of Estimates. It’s a three-year loan that will be converted to a grant if the company maintains an employment level of 1,600 full-time workers.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the loan is designed to offset the costs of Amazon providing shuttles for employees to get to work. Baltimore Development Corp. officials told the paper that public transportation to get to the warehouse is inadequate. The commute can be as long as 90 minutes using public transit, so Amazon is providing its own form of transportation.
As for that much-opined transit system, Gov. Larry Hogan proposed a major overhaul that would reroute buses. Part of the idea behind the BaltimoreLink plan is to make it easier to get where the jobs are, and the Amazon complex is identified as a key destination. The length of the loan appears to provide a holdover until that system gets online. BaltimoreLink isn’t slated to be up and running until mid-2017 at the earliest.