prime location?
Amazon names 2 Texas cities as prime candidates for $5 billion second headquarters
While Houston was a hopeful prime candidate, another major Texas city now officially appears on Amazon’s new shortlist for the e-commerce giant’s $5 billion second headquarters.
On Thursday, January 18, Amazon revealed it narrowed the field of 238 North American candidates for the so-called HQ2 project to 20 finalists, including Dallas. Austin also made the cut; Houston did not.
Seattle-based Amazon says it eventually will create up to 50,000 jobs at its second headquarters. In announcing the 20 finalists, the company emphasizes that HQ2 will be a true headquarters, not a satellite office.
Aside from the potential for 50,000 high-paying jobs, Amazon HQ2 is expected to generate tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the metro area that lands the project.
Amazon says it evaluated each of the 238 bids based on criteria outlined in the company’s call for proposals. Now, Amazon will work with the 20 finalists to dig deeper into their proposals, request further information, and evaluate how they’d accommodate the company’s hiring plans and workforce needs. Amazon plans to make a decision about HQ2 in 2018.
“Thank you to all 238 communities that submitted proposals. Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough — all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” Holly Sullivan, an executive with Amazon Public Policy, says in a release. “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.”
In alphabetical order, here’s the list of the 20 finalists for Amazon HQ2:
- Atlanta
- Austin
- Boston
- Chicago
- Columbus, Ohio
- Dallas
- Denver
- Indianapolis
- Los Angeles
- Miami
- Montgomery County, Maryland
- Nashville
- Newark, New Jersey
- New York City
- Northern Virginia
- Philadelphia
- Pittsburgh
- Raleigh, North Carolina
- Toronto
- Washington, D.C.