LA Faces Uphill Battle In Bid For Amazon Headquarters

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles County's bid to become a site for Amazon's second headquarters will face 237 other competitors from municipalities around North America, the online retailer announced Monday.

Via Twitter, the company said, "We received 238 proposals from across North America for HQ2. The team is excited to review each of them!"

Amazon, headquartered in Seattle, announced in September plans to invest $5 billion to build and operate a second headquarters and asked cities to submit bids.

Los Angeles County's bid was submitted last week and developed with the help of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation.

Few details about the bid have been released. The LAEDC said nine sites were included, but it did not release which ones. It is believed that Warner Center in the west San Fernando Valley is one of them because L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield made it known through a motion he submitted and an editorial that he was promoting it as a location.

Long Beach, Santa Clarita and Pomona are also believed to be part of the bid. Long Beach is also submitting a joint bid with Huntington Beach in Orange County outside of the LAEDC bid.

Amazon published a map that showed bids were received from cities in most U.S. states, Puerto Rico, six provinces in Canada and three provinces in Mexico.

The Seattle-based internet giant said the second headquarters will provide 50,000 new high-paying jobs.

Moody's Analytics recently published a top 10 list of metropolitan areas that best fit Amazon's published desires for an HQ2 site, and Los Angeles was not included. Austin-Round Rock, Texas, was rated first and Atlanta was second.

Some analysts believe that the company will want to diversify geographically away from the West Coast. The company's main headquarters is in Seattle.

Amazon is expected to announce a winner next year.

City News Service; Photo by Jacob Repko on Unsplash