CHICAGO ONE OF 20 FINALISTS FOR AMAZON HQ2
Emanuel, Rauner tout Chicago as best choice, but size of remaining field is a surprise
It was no big surprise on Thursday when Chicago was named a finalist in the competition to be the site of a second North American headquarters for internet giant Amazon.
It was a surprise that the field remains crowded.
Chicago is one of 20 metro areas still in the running, and though Mayor Rahm Emanuel has known privately for weeks that Chicago would make the cut, he didn’t know until Thursday it would have so much company.
Still, Emanuel, Gov. Bruce Rauner and others were celebrating the news.
“To New York and all of the other cities competing — Chicago is coming after you,” the mayor said Thursday.
Rauner was similarly enthusiastic.
“We are ready to show the company why we believe the Chicago area is their best option,” he said in a statement issued by his office. Later, though, Rauner couldn’t resist injecting a little politics.
“We will have a better case to make to Amazon if we show that we’re disciplined about our own taxes,” Rauner said after a roundtable discussion on property taxes in Country Club Hills. Illinois, he added, must “work to keep our taxes low and help to bring our taxes down. If we make progress in this, this will send a great message to Amazon that Illinois is not always just raising taxes with a corrupt system.”
Emanuel seemed to understand why Rauner, his longtime friend, had rained on Chicago’s parade.
“He’s in the middle of a campaign season,” Emanuel said of Rauner.
Chicago isn’t competing just for Amazon. Two other huge companies — Apple and Google — also
EDITORIAL
Amazon choices reflect what it takes to be a top city | Page 19 are headquarters- shopping. And the city “makes a ton of sense” for Amazon, Google, Apple or “any other fastgrowing company looking for scale,” one Emanuel confidant said.
But it’s hard to tell where Chicago stands right now.
“The range of cities in terms of where they are, what they are and their airport, transportation and higher ed capabilities, their cost of living, the size and depth of their workforce, their diversity is still so varied that it is hard to read too much into this list,” the mayoral confidant, who asked to remain anonymous, wrote in a text message to the Sun- Times.
Others making the cut are: Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; Denver; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; Miami; Montgomery County, Md.; Nashville; Newark, N. J.; New York City; Northern Virginia; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Raleigh, N. C.; Toronto; Washington, D. C.
Amazon said culling the field of 238 applicants to 20 finalists “was very tough.”
Now, the company “will work with each of the candidate loca- tions to dive 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.”
The exact timing of a final decision is unclear; nor is it certain whether Amazon would visit all the cities again or make another cut before announcing a winner.
The city and state have already offered 10 sites in the Chicago area’s $ 2.25 billion bid. The pot could easily be sweetened as the Amazon sweepstakes continues — and those same 10 sites are likely to be offered to Apple and Google.
Amazon said a decision would be made this year.