The New York City and Washington D.C. metro areas are splitting Amazon’s planned second headquarters project, according to a Wall Street Journal report Monday night. The official announcement could be made as soon as Tuesday, the media outlet said, citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”
Losing dibs on the tech giant’s proposed HQ2 and a projected 50,000 jobs would be tough news for boosters in Georgia and Atlanta, as well as a host of other cities that tried to lure Amazon as it promised a major headquarters expansion beyond its Seattle base.
Georgia officials were holding out for official notification before commenting Monday evening.
The Wall Street Journal reported the company has settled on New York’s Long Island City as well as Crystal City, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington D.C.
Speculation has been building that metro Atlanta was already out of the running. A state official told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier that Georgia officials hadn't held HQ2 discussions with Amazon in months, even as news outlets reported the company was in talks with other contenders.
A week ago, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said he didn’t think Amazon had made a final determination, but “we are not going to have our hearts broken if they decide to go somewhere else.”
Amazon generated enormous attention with its very public call out last year for cities interested in landing the project. Atlanta made the company's short list of top 20 cities still in the running in January.
The project was coveted for its potential to boost local economies, even as it raised worries that growth of that magnitude would overwhelm communities with traffic, higher housing prices and gentrification. There also were concerns about pressure to offer Amazon enormous financial incentives.
