Chicago is one of 20 cities that has made Amazon's shortlist of locations that could be home to the e-commerce giant's second North American headquarters.
The cities include:
- Atlanta, GA
- Austin, TX
- Boston, MA
- Chicago, IL
- Columbus, OH
- Dallas, TX
- Denver, CO
- Indianapolis, IN
- Los Angeles, CA
- Miami, FL
- Montgomery County, MD
- Nashville, TN
- Newark, NJ
- New York City, NY
- Northern Virginia, VA
- Philadelphia, PA
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Raleigh, NC
- Toronto, ON
- Washington D.C.
Amazon received a total of 238 proposals for its HQ2 plans. It expects to make its decision later this year.
In October, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner announced they had jointly submitted 10 possible Chicagoland locations for Amazon to consider. The spots included space in and around the Old Main Post Office, Fulton Market, the former Motorola Solutions headquarters in Schaumburg and the former McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook.
“The sites identified in Chicago’s bid for HQ2 demonstrate the region’s unparalleled potential to support Amazon’s future growth,” Emanuel said in a statement at the time, adding that "Chicago is the ideal city for Amazon’s second headquarters as the company continues to expand.”
Amazon said it plans to invest over $5 billion in HQ2 and employ as many as 50,000 workers. Amazon said that over the next few months it will "work with each of the candidate locations to dive deeper into their proposals, request additional information, and evaluate the feasibility of a future partnership that can accommodate the company’s hiring plans as well as benefit its employees and the local community."
"Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity," Holly Sullivan, Amazon's head of public policy, said in a statement. "Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation."
Toronto was the lone non-U.S. city on the list. The Washington D.C. area has three possible locations on the list: Montgomery County, MD; Northern Virginia; and Washington D.C. itself.
In the Midwest, Columbus, OH and Indianapolis, IN both cracked the top 20.
