13 Canadian cities vying to win Amazon’s HQ2
Cities in six provinces were among 238 proposals to be the home of Amazon’s second headquarters, the company announced on Monday.
The online retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising to bring 50,000 new jobs and spend more than $5 billion on construction. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big deciding factor on where it chooses to land.
At least 13 Canadian cities announced their intentions to make a bid in the lead-up to the Thursday deadline for proposals: Vancouver, Langford, B.C., Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario’s Simcoe County, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
The stakes are so high that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to try to coax him into selecting one of the Canadian cities. “As the first country in the world to adopt a policy of multiculturalism,” reads the two-page letter, “we have shown time and time again that a country can be stronger not in spite of its differences, but because of them.”
Amazon.com Inc. did not list which cities or metro areas applied, but said the proposals came from the six Canadian provinces, along with 43 U.S. states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, and three Mexican states.
In a tweet, the company said it was “excited to review each of them.”
Besides looking for financial incentives, Amazon had stipulated that it was seeking to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to as much as eight million square feet in the next decade.
Generous tax breaks and other incentives can erode a city’s tax base. For the winner, it could be worth it, since an Amazon headquarters could draw other tech businesses and their well-educated, highly paid employees.
The seven U.S. states that Amazon said did not apply were: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.
Ahead of the deadline, some cities turned to stunts to try and stand out: Representatives from Tucson, Ariz., sent a seven-metretall cactus to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters; New York lit the Empire State Building orange to match Amazon’s smile logo.
The company plans to remain in its sprawling Seattle headquarters, and the second one will be “a full equal” to it, Bezos said in September. Amazon has said that it will announce a decision sometime next year.