Amazon Selects 20 Locations as Finalists for Its New Headquarters

If you live in Columbus, Ohio, or Montgomery County, Maryland, you have reason to be optimistic. That is, of course, if you've taken interest in where Amazon will be opening its second headquarters. Speculation for the location of HQ2, as the project has been dubbed, has consumed the media for months, especially in those cities that have been in the running. As of this morning, the number of cities Amazon is considering has been narrowed to 20.

When Amazon announced its intentions for the project in September, more than 238 applications were submitted by local officials from Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Each local official was not only enticed by the exciting brand potentially calling their city home, but more so by the 50,000 high-paying jobs the Seattle-based company would bring with it. The newly announced list, which is included below, shows that Amazon is leaning more toward the Midwest and East Coast (with surprising cities such as Columbus and Boston) versus the tech-saturated suburbs of San Fransisco.

The final 20 cities Amazon is considering for HQ2 include:
Atlanta
Austin, Texas
Boston
Chicago
Columbus, Ohio
Dallas
Denver
Indianapolis
Los Angeles
Miami
Montgomery County, Maryland
Nashville
Newark, New Jersey
New York
Northern Virginia
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Raleigh, North Carolina
Toronto
Washington, D.C.

Amazon asked city officials to provide the company with a list of statistics for them to consider, including potential building sites, crime and traffic stats, and nearby recreational opportunities. More importantly, perhaps, it inquired as to the types of tax incentives that would be made available to the company.

Yet it's not just their HQ2 that's kept Amazon in the news of late. In 2017 the roughly $628 billion dollar company announced that they would acquire Whole Foods and the right to stream NFL games on Prime Video.