Gary, Ind., lobbies for Amazon’s new site

Mayor asks CEO Bezos to consider struggling city for HQ2 expansion.

Karen Freeman-Wilson knows her city is in trouble.

About a third of people in Gary, Ind., live in poverty. A fifth of buildings are vacant or abandoned. Potholes and trash mar the streets — the budget has little room for regular upkeep.

So Freeman-Wilson, who grew up here and became the city’s first female mayor five years ago, penned an open letter to a man she believes could help revive Gary: Jeffrey Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com.

Bezos recently announced he was looking for a place to open the technology giant’s second headquarters — a move the company says would bring up to 50,000 jobs that pay an average annual salary of $100,000.

Freeman-Wilson thought: Why not Gary? She appealed to Bezos in the voice of her city, spending nearly $10,000 to publish the words as an advertisement this week in The New York Times.

“I know locating to me may seem far-fetched,” she wrote. “But far-fetched is what we do in America. It was far-fetched for 13 scrawny American colonies to succeed against the might of the British Empire.”

Amazon, based in Seattle, says it plans to pour $5 billion into building and running the location, to be named Amazon HQ2.