Amazon HQ2 is Amazon's corporate headquarters in National Landing (part of Arlington, Virginia) in the Washington metropolitan area, and an expansion of the company's headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Phase I, which currently houses 8,500 employees and has capacity for 14,000 employees, opened in June 2023. Construction on Phase II is paused indefinitely; the company has said that it currently has enough space for its needs.
HQ2 was announced in September 2017, when Amazon submitted request for proposals asking for tax breaks and other incentives to entice the company. At that time, Amazon claimed that it intended to spend $5 billion on construction and that HQ2 would house 50,000 workers when completed. More than 200 cities in Canada, Mexico, and the United States offered tax breaks, expedited construction approvals, promises of infrastructure improvements, new crime-reduction programs, and other incentives. In January 2018, a shortlist of 20 finalists was announced.
In November 2018, Amazon announced that HQ2 would be split into two locations, eventually reaching 25,000 workers at each: National Landing in Arlington County, Virginia, and Long Island City in Queens, New York City. In February 2019, Amazon cancelled the New York location after strong opposition from local grassroots organizers, residents and politicians, many of whom cited it as an example of corporate welfare. Virginia will provide Amazon with grants of $22,000 per worker with a salary of above $164,000 (as of 2026) that remains in place for 4-5 years as well as a percentage of hotel taxes received over a breakpoint. As of 2026, Amazon has only received $81,000 in taxpayer subsidies, all of which was related to excess hotel taxes generated.
Background
Amazon was founded in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington, and leased space in SoDo, Seattle. As the company grew, it moved offices around Downtown Seattle, until announcing a move to a purpose-built headquarters campus in South Lake Union, Seattle, which at that time was a light industrial enclave undergoing urban renewal. By October 2017, Amazon occupied of office space in 33 buildings in Seattle, employing 40,000 white collar workers.
The expansion of Amazon's headquarters outside of Seattle was characterized as a "wake-up call" to Seattle to improve the city's business climate by former Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Comparisons were made to Boeing's decision to move its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001, which came as a surprise to Seattle.
Request for proposal Amazon's request for proposal for HQ2 included preferences for:
Metropolitan areas with a population of over 1 million Within of a population center Within 45 minutes of an international airport with direct flights to Seattle, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Proximity to major highways and arterial roads Access to mass transit routes Up to of office space for future expansion Proximity to major universities
Bids were required to be submitted by October 2017. A final site was planned to be selected and announced in November 2018, from a shortlist of 20 cities released in January 2018.
Bids Submitted By the deadline, 238 proposals were submitted and received by Amazon, from 54 jurisdictions, including municipalities in all U.S. states except Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. The Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan also had no regions submit a bid, along with the Yukon Territory.
In early and mid-October, Little Rock, Arkansas, and San Antonio, Texas withdrew their bid submissions.
Promotional bids Several cities and groups promoted their HQ2 bids by engaging in promotional campaigns and gimmicks, including offers and gifts to Amazon. Sun Corridor, a Tucson, Arizona economic development firm, sent a 21-foot saguaro cactus to Amazon in an attempt to promote the city's bid. The gift was rejected due to the company's corporate gifts policy, instead donating it to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The city of Stonecrest, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, voted to de-annex of land for Amazon to establish its own city named Amazon around its headquarters.
Sly James, mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, purchased 1,000 products from Amazon, which he donated to charity. James wrote five-star reviews for each one of them, in which every review mentioned positive attributes of Kansas City. Primanti Brothers, a chain of sandwich shops based in Pittsburgh, offered free sandwiches to Amazon employees if they chose the city as their second headquarters.
The city of Birmingham, Alabama erected several giant Amazon boxes and dash buttons around public areas. The dash buttons sent out pre-generated tweets to lure Amazon to the city. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced that major landmarks in the city would be lit in orange to promote the city's campaign for HQ2.
A group from Calgary sprayed messages onto sidewalks in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood urging the company to choose the city. During an Ottawa Senators hockey game, fans were encouraged to "make noise" for the city of Ottawa's Amazon bid.
The neighboring American and Canadian cities of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario submitted a bid together and campaigned the two cities to be the home of the new Amazon campus. With the headquarters being divided across the Canada–United States border, the company could take advantage of tax incentives offered by both Ontario and Michigan. Amazon would also be able to capitalize on the less restrictive Canadian immigration laws and the lower currency exchange of the Canadian dollar.
Criticism and opposition In early 2018, New York University Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway said Amazon was soliciting bids from places that it never intended to move to solely to gain tax breaks. He predicted that HQ2 would be located in either the New York metropolitan area or the Washington metropolitan area; with the decision to create two locations, Galloway ended up predicting both correctly. He repeatedly called the competition a "ruse" and a "con". Galloway said that "the game was over before it started", claiming that the proximity to both Jeff Bezos' home and the United States Capital made the DC area an obvious choice.
In an editorial in USA Today, Steven Strauss, a lecturer and visiting professor at Princeton University, suggested that metropolitan areas should be cautious about bidding too generously to win the Amazon bid since companies have failed to follow up on expansion plans. Strauss wrote that it was possible that cities could over-pay (the so-called "winner's curse") by providing an overly generous incentive package, which would turn out to be a money-losing proposition for the municipality if all the promised jobs did not materialize.
Conservative and liberal advocacy groups voiced their opposition to various tax breaks promised by cities in hopes of luring Amazon citing the offers as corporate welfare.
Jim Balsillie remarked that he was disappointed in W. Edmund Clark, who was in charge of the Toronto bid, when Clark highlighted the lower salaries of tech workers in Canada compared to the U.S. Balsillie found this strategy to be "misguided... these strategies put our tech workers in a global race to the bottom, competing on cost with the salaries in Poland, Ukraine, and India."
There were concerns that HQ2 would drop a "prosperity bomb" on the winning communities that would lead to soaring rents and property taxes.
Finalists
In January 2018, Amazon announced its shortlist of 20 finalists for HQ2. Finalists were primarily on the East Coast and in the Midwest, with Los Angeles the only selection from the West Coast and Toronto the only city outside of the United States.
Atlanta, Georgia (including Stonecrest) Austin, Texas Boston, Massachusetts (Suffolk Downs-East Boston and Somerville) Chicago, Illinois (City Center Campus, Downtown Gateway District, River District, Lincoln Yards, The 78, Burnham Lakefront, Fulton Market District, Illinois Medical District, Schaumburg, Oak Brook) Columbus, Ohio (Franklinton, Ohio State University, Easton) Dallas, Texas Denver, Colorado Indianapolis, Indiana Los Angeles, California Miami, Florida Montgomery County, Maryland Nashville, Tennessee Newark, New Jersey New York City, New York (West Midtown Manhattan, Financial District, Brooklyn Tech Triangle, Long Island City) Northern Virginia (Fairfax and Loudoun counties, including Arlington and Alexandria, in Virginia) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Schuylkill Yards, uCity Square, Navy Yard) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Raleigh, North Carolina Toronto, Ontario (including Mississauga, Brampton, York Region, Durham Region, Halton Region, Waterloo Region, Guelph and Hamilton) Washington, D.C. (Anacostia Riverfront, Capitol Hill East, NoMa-Union Station, Shaw-Howard University)
Some of the finalists used their Amazon proposals to attract investments from other multinational corporations.
Amazon representatives began tours of its finalist cities in late February. Bidding cities also signed non-disclosure agreements with Amazon for the duration of the bid process. although the NDA did not prevent disclosure of financial incentives that cities have offered. By May 2018, Amazon representatives had visited the 20 finalist cities.
In early November 2018, the likelihood of Crystal City being chosen as the winning bid was leaked to the press, which Amazon states was in violation of the non-disclosure agreement; the travel patterns of Jeff Bezos also led to speculation that Crystal City would be chosen.
Winning bids The selections of New York City and Northern Virginia for the HQ2 sites were confirmed on November 13, 2018. As part of the announcement, "National Landing" was chosen as the new name for the neighborhood of HQ2 in Northern Virginia; it encompasses Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yard. Amazon also announced that it would employ 5,000 people at a new Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville, Tennessee.
Long Island City
The subsidies offered to Amazon in New York included performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on whether the company created 25,000 jobs. This included a refundable tax credit through the state's Excelsior Program of up to $1.2 billion, calculated as a percentage of the salaries Amazon expects to pay employees over the following 10 years. The Empire State Development Corporation also offered Amazon a cash grant of $325 million based on the occupancy rates of HQ2 buildings over in the following 10 years. Half of the property taxes for the city's HQ2 campus would be waived, and the tax payments would go to the city's PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) fund to pay for infrastructure improvements in New York City. Both states proposed that Amazon be given access to a helipad, and the New York state government also promised to upgrade nearby infrastructure. Officials estimated that Amazon's move would generate $27 billion in taxes for the city and state.
Amazon was said to have chosen New York City as one of the sites for HQ2 because of the city's highly skilled pool of talent; existing tech, finance, and media industries; and strong university system, including Columbia University and Cornell Tech.
Cancellation of New York portion