Amazon says it has 238 entries for 2nd HQ
Scottsboro, Ala., among the bidders
Amazon will be sorting through 238 proposals from cities and regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico hoping to land the company’s second headquarters and the investment it will bring.
The online retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising 50,000 new jobs and construction spending of more than $5 billion. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big factor in deciding what entry prevails.
Amazon.com Inc. did not specify which cities or metro areas applied, but many of the locations have made their interest public. The company said Monday the proposals came from 43 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces.
In a tweet, the company said it was “excited to review each of them.”
Amazon said it prefers metro areas with more than 1 million people and is looking for existing buildings of at least 500,000 square feet and total site space of up to 8 million square feet. The company also said it would prefer sites within 30 miles of a population center and within 45 minutes of an international airport.
Officials in Chattanooga, which has a metro population only about half as much as what Amazon preferred, opted not to submit a proposal and is hoping to capitalize on the overflow if other nearby markets which did bid for the project, including Nashville and Atlanta, are successful. To entice interest in Georgia’s biggest metro area, one of the cities in metro Atlanta, Stonecrest, Ga., voted to change its
name to Amazon, Ga., if the company locates its second headquarters there.
Despite its much smaller size, Scottsboro, Ala., — population 14,677 last year — put in a proposal to Amazon, according to Mayor Robin Shelton.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Shelton told the Scottsboro Daily Sentinel.
A bid also came from Alaska, according to Amazon, though the entire state has a population below 1 million.
“Most of the 238 probably lack some of those big-city advantages,” said Jed Kolko, the chief economist at job website Indeed. But most places probably could not pass up the chance of getting 50,000 jobs, “even if the odds of
winning are low,” he said.
Although generous tax breaks and other incentives can erode a city’s tax base, Amazon’s headquarters could draw even more tech businesses along with their well-educated, highly paid employees.
In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Newark’s bid, saying the state and the city are planning nearly $7 billion in tax breaks. Detroit bid organizers said its proposal offers Amazon the unique chance to set up shop in both the U.S. and Canada. Missouri officials proposed an innovation corridor between Kansas City and St. Louis rather than a single location.
The seven U.S. states 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 21-foot tall 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, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in September. Amazon has said it will announce a decision sometime next year.