Amazon has reportedly selected two joint sites for its second headquarters, or HQ2: Long Island City—a neighborhood in Queens, New York City—and Crystal City, Virginia, adjacent to Washington DC.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news on Monday evening, the selection caps a process that lasted over a year to lure the Seattle-based retail giant.
In January 2018, 20 "finalist" cities were named, including Raleigh, Toronto, Chicago, and Atlanta, among others.
The company said at the time that it expected to "invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs—it will be a full equal to our current campus in Seattle."
In a way, the New York and Northern Virginia sites make sense, as the company had asked in its RFP specifically for "daily direct flights" to Seattle, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington DC. (The only western coastal city that was considered was Los Angeles.)
The Washington Post, which also confirmed the news Monday evening, noted that while "238 locations initially submitted proposals to Amazon, the Washington region was considered a favorite from the outset by many experts due to Bezoss personal connections in the region, particularly the $23 million mansion he purchased in the citys Kalorama neighborhood last year and his ownership of The Washington Post."
Amazon did not immediately respond to Ars request for comment.
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Ars Technica
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