Toronto’s Tory to woo Amazon
Mayor says his city is ‘prime candidate’ for the company’s second headquarters
TORONTO — Toronto Mayor John Tory says he will be leading the charge to convince Amazon that it should call the city its second home.
Amazon announced Thursday that it is hunting for a site for a new headquarters in North America, in addition to its sprawling Seattle hub.
Tory says in a statement that Toronto is a prime candidate for the technology giant and city staff plan to put together an attractive bid.
The mayor says he believes Toronto is a “prime candidate.”
“We are a bold, innovative city that has plenty of homegrown tech talent. We also continue to attract talent and companies from around the world ... I will be leading the charge to make the case that Amazon should call Toronto home,” he said in a statement.
Amazon says that it will spend more than US$5 billion to build another headquarters in North America to house as many as 50,000 employees. Amazon.com has outgrown Seattle.
The e-commerce giant employs about 40,000 people in Seattle after a hiring boom and urban buildout with little precedent in modern American history.
The new headquarters will “be a full equal” to Amazon’s Seattle home, chief executive Jeff Bezos said. “We’re excited to find a second home.”
Amazon said the so-called HQ2 will be a complete headquarters for Amazon — not a satellite office. It said it expects to hire new teams and executives in HQ2, and will also let existing senior leaders across the company decide whether to locate their teams.
Employees currently working in HQ1 can choose to continue working there, or they could have an opportunity to move if they would prefer to be located in HQ2, it said.
“We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters,” Bezos said.
“Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in upfront and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re excited to find a second home.”
Plans for a new headquarters seem to chart expectations for more rapid growth at a company that was already likely the second largest employer in the U.S.
After sealing the $13.5-billion purchase of Whole Foods Market, and its 87,000 employees, last month, the combined workforce likely totalled 469,000, trailing only Walmart and its 2.3 million employees. About 40,000 Amazonians work across 8.1 million square feet of office space in the company’s sprawling Seattle campus, and Amazon is on track to grow that physical footprint by half in the next five years.
The public search for a new headquarters will likely spark a bidding war among states and cities eager for a piece of one of America’s fastest-growing companies.
An eight-page request for proposal Amazon posted online Thursday said incentives offered to offset building and operating costs “will be significant factors in the decision-making process.”
The company listed other criteria on its wish list, including an urban or suburban core in a metropolitan area with more than a million people, a highly educated workforce and a “stable and business-friendly environment.”