So... Amazon has finally released their final 20 cities they will be choosing from to build their second headquarters. Any surprise of the list? Which 5 cities do you think it will be narrowed down to? What's your favorite? And oh... NYC made the list...
Atlanta
Austin, Tex.
Boston
Chicago
Columbus, Ohio
Dallas
Denver
Indianapolis
Los Angeles
Miami
Montgomery County, Md.
Nashville
Newark
New York
Northern Virginia
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Raleigh, N.C.
Toronto
Washington, D.C.
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Just curious, what's the point of amazon announcing this top 20? In the grand scheme of things this list is largely irrelevant - just selecting 20 of the largest cities...
Is it just to draw increased hype surrounding the eventual decision?
They most likely started off with two or three cities chosen. They are doing this dog and pony show to get all of the cities to compete for the best abatements so they can leverage it against the city that they actually wanted to move to originally.
"Columbus assembled an incentives package in which Amazon would receive a 15-year, 100% property-tax abatement at every site included in HQ2" This is estimated to save Amazon up to $2.3B
"Chris Christie and state legislative leaders said they would offer Amazon tax breaks worth $7 billion over the next decade"
Could you imagine trying to negotiate with a company with the cards stacked this much in their favor?
PrestigeCaller Rank the Amazon 2nd HQ cities by prestige tier
It's really Boston or Atlanta. Atlanta is perfect for them and for Bezos. Georgia is a fiscally conservative state and very welcoming for Business and tax incentives, which helps Amazon Corporate. Atlanta is a socially liberal city in the south, but not really the "south", which appeals to Bezos and his more liberal mindset. He just donated $30 million to the Dreamers. Atlanta is affordable and probably the top international airport in the US. Also, and this is really unrelated, but Atlanta is a majority black city, which doesn't really mean anything, but I thought it showed its liberal tendencies by its racial demographics. Lots of tech geeks making 6 figures are liberals, whereas lots of finance hardos making 6 figures and conservatives. ATL it is.