With Amazon courting Atlanta, mayor touts ‘Gulch’ project

With Amazon.com expected to soon name its site for a second headquarters, Atlanta’s mayor said a colossal development planned for downtown represents a once-in-alifetime shot to transform the city.

Amazon launched a high-stakes municipal beauty pageant in January by narrowing its list of potential locations to 20 finalists, including Atlanta. The company has said it expects to declare the winner of the headquarters and its roughly 50,000 jobs by year’s end.

Atlanta city council members were given a few more details Tuesday about the potential impact of developing an underused site known as “The Gulch” that could meet Amazon’s search criteria.

“We are talking about thou- sands of jobs, potentially, that would come into this area and also the elephant in the room is that very big company that is looking at the city as a place to relocate their headquarters,” Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms said at Tuesday’s city council meeting.

Planning documents made public earlier this year revealed that Atlanta’s project could include 18 buildings with 9.3 million square feet (.87 million square meters) of office space — more than three times the space in the Empire State Building.

Amazon has said it needs up to 8 million square feet of office space for a second headquarters outside Seattle.

Atlanta is working with Los Angeles-based development firm CIM Group on the plans. Details of exactly how the project would be financed have yet to be worked out, city officials said Tuesday.