Amazon narrows potential HQ site list to 20
ABQ, Doña Ana don’t make cut
NEW YORK — Amazon’s second home could be in an already tech-heavy city, such as Boston, New York or Austin, Texas. Or it could be in the Midwest, say, Indianapolis or Columbus, Ohio. Or the company could go outside the U.S. altogether and set up shop in Toronto.
Those six locations, as well as 14 others, made it onto Amazon’s not-so-short shortlist Thursday of places under consideration for the online retailing giant’s second headquarters.
The 20 picks, narrowed down from 238 proposals, are concentrated mostly in the East and the Midwest and include several of the biggest metro areas in the country, such as Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, the only West Coast city on the list.
Neither of New Mexico’s bids — Albuquerque and a binational, cross-border proposal in Doña Ana County — made the list.
The Seattle-based company set off fierce competition last fall when it announced that it was looking for a second home, promising 50,000 jobs and construction spending of more than $5 billion.
Nearly all the cities on Amazon’s list already have growing economies, low unemployment and highly educated populations.
“Amazon has picked a bunch of winners,” said Richard Florida, an economic development expert and professor at the University of Toronto who helped develop that city’s bid. “It really reflects winner-take-all urbanism.”
Amazon said it will make a final selection sometime this year.
Besides Austin, another Texas city made the cut: Dallas. Pennsylvania also has two on the list: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Other contenders among the 20 include Denver; Montgomery County, Md.; Nashville, Tenn.; Newark, N.J.; Northern Virginia; Miami, Atlanta and Raleigh, N.C.
“It’s a long list for a shortlist,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist at job site Indeed.
He said Amazon may use the list to pit the locations against each other and get better tax breaks or other incentives. Two metro areas, New York and Washington, have more than one location on the list, increasing the competition there, he said.
The company had stipulated that it wanted to be near a metropolitan area with more than 1 million people, and nearly all of those on the shortlist have a metro population of at least double that.
Amazon also wanted to 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 the headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade.
But Amazon also made it very clear it wanted tax breaks, grants and any other incentives.