Amazon plans to hew second headquarters in two cities

Amazon

Dallas, Long Island City in New York and Arlington near Washington, DC are all among the finalists with which Amazon is holding advanced talks, one of the people said on condition of anonymity. The person would not confirm to which two are expected to win or if any others remain in the running.

Amazon declined to comment on the news, first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The world’s largest online retailer sparked a bidding frenzy in September 2017 when it announced it would invest over $5 billion to create an “HQ2” in addition to its home base in Seattle and hire up to 50,000 peoples.

One of the major reasons for the decision was for Amazon, which has satellite operations around the world, to recruit top talent. Offering a choice of head offices could help it win new workers in a battle with Alphabet Inc’s Google and others, with which Amazon competes in areas such as cloud computing and voice-controlled technology.

“Amazon is going where it won’t have to jostle with Google and Facebook as much as it would in San Francisco or it does in Seattle,” said Alex Snyder, analyst at CentreSquare Investment Management near Philadelphia.

An affordable housing crisis there prompted the city council to adopt a head tax on businesses in May, which Amazon helped overturn in a following city council vote.

It was unclear what incentive packages were offered to Amazon. New Jersey early in the contest proposed $7 billion in potential credits against state and city taxes if Amazon located in New York and stuck to hiring commitments.

On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state was in talks with Amazon. “We have a great incentive package,” which was not “crazy” like other states’ offers, he said, according to audio from WCBS 880 Radio.

“I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” he said.