Using the internet is a part of everyday life for most people. And while there are about four billion searches on Google every day, Amazon also attracts billions of visits every day. And the online shopping site has recently announced its plans to build new headquarters in New York City and Virginia.
Queens, New York and Arlington, Virginia were selected from a group of 238 locations competing to become the HQ2 for the retail giant.
According to Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, “We are excited to build new headquarters in New York City and Northern Virginia. These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue inventing for customers for years to come. The team did a great job selecting these sites, and we look forward to becoming an even bigger part of these communities.”
Amazon will be investing $5 billion into building the new headquarter sites. And although the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the median household income in NYC is already around $50,711, 50,000 new job opportunities will be created from this new project. Amazon will begin hiring at these sites in 2019.
Along with New York City and Virginia, Nashville, Tennessee was chosen to be Amazon’s new “Center of Excellence for its Operations business, which is responsible for the company’s customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain, and other similar activities”. Nashville will see an additional 5,000 jobs created from this site.
The project of choosing a new location for Amazon’s second headquarters took 14 months. After narrowing the selection down to 20 finalists, the company decided to split into two locations instead of just one. The proposals consisted of several requirements, including having a business-friendly environment and tax incentives. And with plenty of cultural amenities and a large talent pool, both NYC and the greater D.C. area fit the bill.
While there were several options in the greater D.C. area, Arlington county stood out with its tech-centric surroundings. There are several large data centers throughout the region, allowing tech giants like Google to connect. And as for NYC, there are about 1.3 million workers in relevant fields that Amazon is looking for — and adding even more people to the city shouldn’t be a problem.
Not everyone is on board for Amazon expanding its empire to two new locations but for those who are interested in working for the retail giant, they’ll now have three locations to choose from instead of just one.
