It's — just about — official: Amazon has chosen New York City and Northern Virginia as split locations for its second (and now third) headquarters. The Wall Street Journal reported the decision the night of Nov. 12, but Amazon will announce the news itself sometime Nov. 13, CNBC reported.
The locations aren't that much of a surprise for anyone who has been listening to recent rumors — an unnamed source said the week of Nov. 5 that Amazon was planning on choosing Long Island City in Queens and Crystal City, Va., which sits just across the Potomac River from Washington D.C.
Ideal Locations
When Amazon announced last year it was looking for a place to put its HQ2, some 238 proposals were submitted from cities and communities all over the United States and Canada, the Associated Press reported. The company had certain requirements from the start. Among them, the location should
- be near a metropolitan area containing more than one million people;
- be within 45 minutes of an international airport;
- have access to mass transit; and
- have space for expansion.
Both Long Island City and Crystal City meet these requirements, and both have a multitude of buildings that are ready to be revived and reenvisioned into office spaces—and Amazon said it could potentially spend more than $5 billion to build HQ2 over 17 years, the Associated Press reported.
While Amazon promised 50,000 new jobs to the new HQ2 location, this split means that Long Island City and Crystal City will see 25,000 jobs each, making the new offices significantly smaller than the company's original Seattle headquarters, which has more than 40,000 employees.
According to Amazon, HQ2 employees can expect to make an average yearly salary of over $100,000.
