Halifax Mayor Mike Savage announced he meant to display a banner in his city reading “Go Toronto”. “As home to a major backbone of the Internet, a top-notch workforce and Washington Dulles global Airport, the two counties are convinced that northern Virginia has all of the assets needed to merit serious consideration”. Denver could give Amazon $100 million in incentives from a state fund, according to the Denver Post. “We offer a low-risk, business-friendly environment with the lowest business taxes and costs in the G7”.
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The 20 picks, narrowed down from 238 proposals, are concentrated mostly in the East and the Midwest and include several of the biggest metro areas in the country, such as Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, the only West Coast city on the list. Multiple economic studies in recent years have zeroed in on Charlotte’s relative lack of research and development infrastructure as one of its main deficiencies in attracting large employers, especially one as forward-looking and technology-driven as Amazon.
“I said good luck to everybody but Newark is where Amazon should absolutely be”, Baraka said. But he added the city was open to other potential sites as well. Everything else is a cliche. “We believe the business case was so strong that we could take Amazon’s name out of the proposal and make it equally compelling for someone else”, Dilkens told the Canadian Press. The victor will be home to the company’s second headquarters in North America.
There has, however, been some backlash to the prospect of Amazon choosing Philadelphia as the location for the HQ2 construction.
“Failure to attract up to 50,000 new Amazon jobs to Minnesota should be a wake-up call. Hosting Amazon would be an enormous win for our city and the entire state, creating tens of thousands of jobs, generating billions in investment and contributing significantly to our economy”.
“Today’s news makes clear that Amazon recognizes Chicago’s great strengths – access to talent, transportation, higher education, affordability and quality of life, which are the keys to growth and prosperity”, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office wrote in a statement via Chicago TV station WLS-TV. Our commitment to economic and workforce development is already yielding results.
Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, Jr. welcomed the announcement.
The Grand Rapids area has missed out on making Amazon’s list of cities under consideration for the online retail giant’s second headquarters. “We truly are a city on the rise, and I look forward to our exciting future”.
Columbus is the only OH city still in competition for Amazon’s multibillion-dollar second headquarters.
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Amazon did not immediately share details of the next steps in the process, but said it would make its final decision later this year.
