The time has come.
Amazon has chosen Northern Virginia’s Crystal City and New York City for its second headquarters, the company announced Tuesday.
The e-commerce giant has said that HQ2 – now split in half – will bring a combined $5 billion in construction investments and as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs to the two metros. More than 25,000 employees will occupy the Arlington offices, Amazon said in a statement.
The new D.C. metro headquarters in Arlington will be located in National Landing, and hiring for both locations will begin in 2019.
Long Island City in Queens, N.Y., will also have 25,000-plus employees, and the company is also creating an operations management center in Nashville that it says will create 5,000 jobs.
Virginia and Arlington will garner approximately $2.5 billion in Amazon investment, 4 million square feet of office space with the opportunity to expand to 8 million square feet, and an estimated incremental tax revenue of $3.2 billion over the next 20 years, according to the company.
As far as incentives, Amazon said it would receive a workforce cash grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia of up to $550 million based on $22,000 for each job created over the next 12 years, as well as a cash grant from Arlington of $23 million over 15 years based on the incremental growth of the local Transient Occupancy Tax.
Virginia is investing $195 million in infrastructure in the Crystal City neighborhood – including improvements to Metro stations – a pedestrian bridge connecting National Landing and Reagan National Airport, and improvements of the pedestrian experience crossing Route 1 over the next 10 years.
Arlington will dedicate an estimated $28 million for on-site infrastructure and open space in National Landing, according to Amazon’s statement. View the full agreement details with Arlington County here and with Virginia here.
Amazon had narrowed the pool of 238 candidates across North America to a list of 20 cities in the U.S. and Canada in January. Here’s a timeline of its HQ2 search.
Amazon is no stranger to the area. Its U.S. public policy team is headquartered in D.C., along with members of the Amazon Web Services public sector team. That’s in addition to the 1.9 million square feet of data center space owned by Amazon in Northern Virginia. Amazon Web Services first came to Northern Virginia for its data centers in 2006.
Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle includes 33 buildings comprising 8.1 million square feet. It has paid its 40,000-plus employees there a combined $26 billion and spent $1.4 billion on utilities and maintenance alone.
The company’s presence there has fueled office construction and spurred jobs in sectors serving its high-paid employees, but rapid growth has been met with rising home prices, higher rents and traffic congestion.
On the other hand, Amazon reports that 233,000 annual hotel nights are bought in Seattle by visiting Amazonians and guests, and that it paid $43 million into the city’s public transportation system as employees’ transportation benefit.
Stay tuned to DC Inno for more news on Amazon’s HQ2 decision.
