Amazon is a growing company. And as it grows, it’ll need to expand its headquarters. When Amazon announced that it was in the market for a new headquarters location, you better believe a lot of states were fighting to be Amazon’s choice.

For most states, this was a chance to bring more job opportunities to one of their cities. And not only that but also revamp their cities. An Amazon headquarters was the solution to a lot of problems within cities around the U.S. And these cities wanted to attract Amazon with everything they had to offer…

New York and Virginia Will Be Amazon’s Newest Homes

On Tuesday, November 13th, Amazon announced the location of its second headquarters. Well… I should say “locations.” The company decided to split the headquarter locations up between New York and Virginia. The specific locations of the headquarters will be in the Long Island City neighborhood in Queens, New York, and in Arlington, Virginia.

Amazon will be investing a total of $5 billion in each location. Each location is expected to create more than 25,000 jobs. The Arlington location is going to be in the neighborhood known as Crystal City near the Reagan National Airport. This location will be prime for Amazon because it’ll be able to offer quicker delivery to the Washington, D.C., area, as well.

Splitting up the headquarters was an interesting move. The company said:

We can recruit more top talent by being in two locations. These are fantastic cities that attract a lot of great talent.

Amazon attracted 238 bids from across the U.S. and Canada in search of a new headquarters location. Now, with the decision to split up the headquarters, it’s all a little anticlimactic.

Amazon Proves Its Worth

What this showed us is that Amazon wanted everyone to see that the company is sought after. The company wanted everyone to see that in a lot of cities’ eyes, Amazon was a solution to many of their problems. Choosing these two locations was somewhat obvious. I’d been hoping for an underdog to win the bid.

Amazon said it expects to receive incentives of almost $1.53 billion in New York and almost $600 million in Arlington. Not to mention, the company expects an estimated $10 billion in extra tax revenue over the next 20 years in New York and $3.2 billion in Arlington.

So, yes, it was a smart decision on Amazon’s part. The company already has a huge footprint in these two areas. And the decision to grow that footprint even larger was an obvious but smart decision, especially to keep growing the company.

Amazon’s growing footprint will affect the areas. Both metro areas have some of the highest housing costs in the country and some of the most congested traffic. And that has locals already concerned about how Amazon’s new locations will affect them.

This has been a strong year for Amazon. The company has hit a few milestones. This includes hitting its $1 trillion valuation in September, CEO Jeff Bezos becoming the world’s wealthiest man in recent history, and publicly committing to paying a minimum wage of $15 to its employees.

Amazon is growing at a fast rate. And having these two new locations will only help in expanding the company throughout the nation.

Until next time,

Jennifer Clark
Pro Trader Today