When Amazon announced it was opening an application process for cities to serve as home for its new secondary headquarters, it led to a clamor of activity from local governments across the country. Today, Amazon revealed it has whittled the candidates down from 238 to just 20.
While Amazon was open to proposals from across North America, it seemed probable that the U.S. would be the most likely home for the so-called HQ2 — and this has turned out to be the case. Applications flew in from Canada and Mexico in addition to the U.S., but of the 20 potential bases for HQ2, 19 are in the U.S. The other is in Toronto, Canada.
The full list is as follows:
– Atlanta, GA
– Austin, TX
– Boston, MA
– Chicago, IL
– Columbus, OH
– Dallas, TX
– Denver, CO
– Indianapolis, IN
– Los Angeles, CA
– Miami, FL
– Montgomery County, MD
– Nashville, TN
– Newark, NJ
– New York City, NY
– Northern Virginia, VA
– Philadelphia, PA
– Pittsburgh, PA
– Raleigh, NC
– Toronto, ON
– Washington D.C.
What’s immediately striking about this list is that nearly every candidate is a major conurbation, which suggests that all the smaller cities that were vying for Amazon’s lucrative employment footprint may not ever have been serious contenders. That said, the smaller regions that did make the cut could be in with a serious shout of grabbing the HQ2 contract, including Maryland’s Montgomery County, which claims a population of around one million, and Raleigh in North Carolina which has a population of just half-a-million.
“Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” noted Holly Sullivan from Amazon Public Policy. “Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.”
Amazon previously stated that the new Amazon HQ2 facility won’t be some sort of satellite office — the plan is that it will be an equal standing to that of its existing Seattle hub.
“We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said at the time.
The company has said that it’s allocating around $5 billion for construction and the new premises should be able to facilitate 50,000 people. The big selling point from a staffing perspective is that existing or prospective employees who perhaps don’t wish to — or can’t afford to — live in Seattle, have options. As for the winning bid, they gain bragging rights for how they’re boosting the local economy.
“Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs,” Bezos added.
Moving forward, Amazon said that it plans to work with each of the candidate locations to “dive deeper into their proposals, request additional information, and evaluate the feasibility of a future partnership.” It confirmed that it expects to make a final decision later in 2018.
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