Amazon announced that it reduced its candidate locations for its second headquarters (HQ2) from 238 to 20. Candidate metropolitan areas are as follows: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Montgomery County, Nashville, Newark, New York City, Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Toronto and Washington, DC.
Next steps include a “deep dive” into each of the individual proposals submitted through a Request for Proposal (RFP) process. Amazon will work with each of the candidate locations to delve deeper into their proposals, request additional information, and evaluate the feasibility of a future partnership that can accommodate the company’s hiring plans as well as benefit its employees and the local community. Amazon expects to make a decision in 2018.
Amazon’s HQ2 will be a complete headquarters for Amazon, not a satellite office. The company plans to invest over $5 billion and grow this second headquarters to accommodate as many as 50,000 high paying jobs. In addition to Amazon’s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon’s HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.