Austin Among Finalists To Land Amazon Headquarters

AUSTIN, TX — Two Texas cities — including Austin — are now on the short list of places being considered for a second Amazon headquarters, officials of the online retail giant said Thursday.

More than 200 municipalities across the country (and even Canada and Mexico) have scrambled to land the job-creating plant dubbed HQ2, preparing detailed assessments highlighting their city's attributes and offering financial inducements in the hopes of landing the company's second headquarters building. On Thursday morning, Amazon officials culled the list of contenders to 20 cities, including Austin and Dallas.

“Thank you to all 238 communities that submitted proposals," Holly Sullivan of the Amazon Public Policy department, said in a prepared statement. "Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity. Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.”

Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce officials reacted to the news of Austin making the cut while other cities, including Houston, were culled. Via its Opportunity Austin economic development program, the chamber submitted a bid on behalf of Austin for the proposed headquarters site.

Related story: Austin Enters The Race, Submitting Its Proposal For Amazon HQ Project

"We are pleased that the Austin region has advanced to the second round,” said chamber spokesman Mike Berman in a prepared statement. “We look forward to presenting the best of what our region has to offer and how we can partner with Amazon. At this point we have no further information.”

Other business leaders welcomed the news of Austin's finalist status as well. Justin Bayne of Firmspace, an Austin luxury co-working company, predicted the city ultimately be picked for the site. He alluded to another concurrent pursuit of Apple seeking a headquarters site to showcase the city's aggressive economic development efforts to build on an already-robust economy.

"Austin is poised to be the home for Amazon's HQ2," Bayne said. "The city's population has surpassed 2 million, which is the magic market number in terms of attracting next-level national retailers, pro sports teams and sprawling corporate campuses like Amazon and Apple."

Existing hubs of commerce in Austin yield a complementary momentum in such business pursuites, Bayne added. In addition to being the CDO of Firmspace, Bayne also is the founder of Austin's leading commercial real estate company SkylesBayne.

"Austin's vibrant downtown scene and secondary business district at The Domain are intelligently built to disperse the city's population density and accommodate the influx of growth that Amazon or Apple would bring."

Apple officials on Wednesday disclosed plans to spend as much as $30 billion on a planned corporate campus and expansion of existing work sites throughout the country. The Cupertino, Calif.,-based company with a significant presence in Austin would create some 20,000 jobs with the moves.

The tech giant operates a 38-acre complex at West Parmer Lane and Delcour Drive housing its 1.1 million-square-foot Americas Operations Center from which it manages corporate functions throughout the northern hemisphere.

For their part, Amazon officials released the 20 cities making the short list for the Amazon plant as part of their announcement. They are:

• Atlanta, Ga.
• Austin
• Boston
• Chicago
• Columbus, Ohio
• Dallas
• Denver
• Indianapolis, Ind.
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Montgomery County, Md.
• Nashville
• Newark, N.J.
• New York City
• Northern Virginia, Va.
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Raleigh, N.C.
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Washington D.C.

To be sure, the Amazon HQ2 project is a major economic development plum for any municipality. The company previously announced plans to invest more than $5 billion and continually expand the site to accommodate as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs created over a 15-year-period. The creation of the full-fledged headquarters site — no mere satellite office, this — also would create ancillary jobs estimated to number in the tens of thousands with tens of billions of additional investment in surrounding communities.

Amazon officials expect to make a decision where to locate HQ2 later this year.

With more than 540,000 employees worldwide, Amazon ranks #1 on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, #2 in Fortune’s World Most Admired Companies, #1 on The Harris Poll’s Corporate Reputation survey, and #2 on LinkedIn’s U.S. most desirable companies list, officials noted. Additionally, Amazon was also recently included in the Military Times’ Best for Vets list of companies committed to providing opportunities for military veterans. Over the past five years, Amazon has invested more than $100 billion in the U.S., including corporate offices, development and research centers, fulfillment infrastructure, and compensation to its teams, officials said.

To learn more about Amazon’s current Seattle headquarters and the latest about HQ2 visit www.amazon.com/amazonHQ2. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

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