Amazon HQ2 visits begin, but city’s tour not on the calendar yet

Pittsburgh still has time to redd up for Amazon.

Mayor Bill Peduto said Wednesday the online retailer has yet to schedule a visit to the Steel City as part of its tour of the 20 finalists for its second headquarters.

Mr. Peduto said he had “no idea” at this point when Amazon would be coming.

“They haven’t told us yet, and I expect that they’ll give us a very short window to prepare,” he said. Pittsburgh has had “a little bit” of contact with Amazon since the city was selected in January as one of the finalists, the mayor said.

“It was just information. They’re looking for numbers. So they want to know a lot of different information,” he said.

Mr. Peduto suspects that the ecommerce king has already been doing its own private reconnaissance in the cities still in the running without notifying them.

“I also believe they’re probably here and will continue to be here without telling us. I really don’t expect that they’re just going to come in for one visit,” he said.

“I’m assuming that when they get down through the proposals and start looking at all the different cities that they’ll be in all the cities with different groups on a continual basis.”

Mr. Peduto said local leaders have no specific agenda planned for Amazon when it does come

calling for an official visit.

“They haven’t told us what they’re looking for when they do, but I don’t think they’re looking for a dog-and-pony show. They’ve been very data driven,” he said.

In a statement Monday, Amazon acknowledged that it had started to visit the 20 cities remaining in the frenzied competition for HQ2, which could bring up to 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment over 17 years.

“Amazon is working with each HQ2 candidate city to dive deeper on their

proposals and share additional information about the company’s plans. We’re excited to visit each location and talk about how HQ2 could benefit our employees and the local community,” the statement read. It came after the Washington Post reported that the company had visited sites in Washington, D.C.; Montgomery County, Maryland; and northern Virginia last week. All three are on the list of finalists.