This article appeared in Boston Business Journal, a sister publication of BostInno.
The response to an obscure article about a Virginia county receiving an environmental award might be a tip to where Amazon’s much-hyped $5 billion second headquarters could eventually land.
A December article in ARLNow, headlined “County Wins Top Environmental Award from U.S. Green Building Council,” received more than 6,000 page views. So, the website decided to investigate the interest in Arlington County’s environmentally friendly policies.
Turns out, the “vast majority of the traffic to the page over the past week that can be tracked came from what appears to be an internal Amazon.com page devoted to its HQ2 search,” ARLNow noted. “No other page on ARLnow.com has a similar level of traffic coming from Amazon.”
Arlington County is in Northern Virginia, one of three Greater Washington D.C.-area sites on Amazon’s not-so-short shortlist of 20 cities. The other sites are the district itself and Maryland's Montgomery County.
As Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) expands into a plethora of industries, including regulated ones such as health care, having a major hub near America’s political ground-zero wouldn't hurt. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and a $23 million home in D.C.
Atlanta, with its globally connected airport, low taxes and burgeoning tech workforce, is considered a favorite to land Amazon’s 8 million square foot headquarters and up to 50,000 jobs.
Georgia is said to have offered more than $1 billion in incentives in its pitch to Amazon. A shortlist of nearly 10 intown Atlanta and suburban sites were presented as potential sites for the mega-campus. A proposed 27-acre redevelopment in downtown Atlanta's "Gulch" site is said to be the city’s "primary site" for Amazon HQ2. It would include at least six office towers — one of which would be 500 feet.
Analytics PR consultancy Hamilton Place Strategies picked Washington D.C. as most likely to land HQ2.
HPS looked at 11 metrics in four categories — transportation; education; business, lifestyle, and culture; and connectivity — for 19 of the 20 cities on Amazon’s short list.
Washington, D.C., earned the top spot on HPS’s report because of its mass transit system, educated workforce, above average livability and diversity, and network connectivity.
Boston came in second, buoyed by its universities and educated workforce. HPS picked North Virginia third based on the same metrics. Atlanta tied with Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia.
