Speculation over whether Amazon would make Chicago their location for their headquarters has come to an end per Chicago Curbed. Amazon announced on Tuesday that Arlington, Virginia and New York City will be the home for their new headquarters. The company decided on two locations and also chose Nashville as an operations center with jobs for 5,000 people.
Chicago was a top contender and had offered ten different sites within the city and it's suburbs. 238 cities had offered proposals to Amazon.
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This is definitely a great loss for Chicago as the move would have brought an estimated 50,000 jobs and would have greatly impacted housing needs, transportation and city resources.
According to the Chicago Tribune, local leaders now need to figure out how to make Chicago a stronger magnet for technology.
"Of course Amazon would speed things up because it's a big infusion of opportunity for technology talent but that doesn't mean we can't speed up with other companies. We have a lot to offer. If we take an aggressive and coordinated and unified step toward building our innovation ecosystem, Chicago can punch at its weight class or above."
Former U.S. Commerce Secretary | Penny Pritzker
Pritzker, a billionaire heir of the Hyatt Hotel fortune, launched an initiative last month called P33 that brings together leaders from different industries and universities that would help to push Chicago into the top tier of the tech world. She also stated that the city has to do a better job of helping local companies grow and keeping tech workers from leaving the city.
Google and Facebook both have offices in Chicago but Amazon's HQ2 would have become the biggest consumer tech operation in the city and would definitely have brought more tech talent to Chicago.
The President of Related Midwest, Curt Bailey said, "The fact that the city was on the short list shows that they recognize what a great place Chicago is, with its universities and smart young people who want to live in a great downtown--which there are only a couple of in the United States."
Related Midwest has a 62 acre site along the Chicago River, in between the South Loop and Chinatown and was twice visited by Amazon.
The New York location that Amazon picked is in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens and its Virginia offices are near Reagan National Airport that includes Crystal City and Pentagon City in Arlington and Potomac Yard near Alexandria. The company has already rebranded the area "National Landing.
Amazon will be receiving incentives of $1.5 billion for the New York project and $573 million from Virginia contingent on creating 25,000 jobs in each area with an average annual salary of more than $150,000. Chicago and the state of Illinois offered more than $2 billion in incentives for the 50,000 jobs the company had originally agreed to.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, "Chicago needs to keep strengthening its tech economy. There are some things we need to continue to to build on and that is making sure that we have a tech economy that is actually world class. If you compete, you have the opportunity to win. Chicago has won more than it has lost, and we actually have a record to show for that."
The reason given for why Amazon chose those two locations was that they both had very strong local and regional talent. Minutes after Amazon had announced their decision, Virginia Tech announced a $1 billion project to build a new campus 2 miles from Amazon's new office site. The campus will focus on tech education and research and this definitely played a big role in attracting Amazon.
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