Today Amazon made it official naming New York City and the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia as the two areas that will split up the 50,000 high-paying jobs the online retail giant is expected to bring.
The two winners will be hiring about 25,000 new employees per site. Plus each area will benefit from an estimated $2.5 billion in spending over the next decade as these two new Amazon headquarters come on line.
18 other cities including Miami are wondering what went wrong in their offers to land the giant jobs creator. In the end Amazon wanted a big city location with plenty of room to grow and that is what got in Queens as well as Northern Virginia.
The Northern Virginia has long been considered a favorite in the race because of the large tech area that will complement the needs of Amazon.
Plus, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lives in the area and owns the Washington Post newspaper. It has been a not so well kept secret that Amazon favored the Northern Virginia site.
The area is already home to top name data centers where tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Salesforce connect. Amazon Web Services itself has 29 individual data centers in Northern Virginia. And Loudon County, where most of the data centers are located, claims that 70 percent of all global Internet traffic flows through it.
Add to all of that the deep talent poll makes the new site a perfect fit. Plenty of smart candidates, plus access to world class transportation, sports, entertainment venues and other things that attract top quality talent.
Long Island City at the western edge of Queens, has been on an apartment building spree. A total of 41 new apartment buildings with more to come.
The Long Island City is booming and Amazon feels that because it is close to New York City will be attractive and affordable to a very deep talent pool. Like, the Northern Virginia, the new Queens site seems like a good fit for what the company wanted in the end.
