San Diego is out. Orange County did not make the cut. Long Beach and Huntington Beach’s joint venture to land Amazon fell to the wayside.
Los Angeles, the only applicant in the state that made it, will represent Team California in the running to land the e-commerce giant’s much-hyped second headquarters.
“We are thrilled that Amazon has selected Los Angeles County as one of the 20 finalist locations for HQ2,” Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. CEO Bill Allen said in a statement. “We are grateful to Amazon for inviting us into this second round of their competition and we want them to know we are in it to win it.”
Seattle-based Amazon announced Thursday it has narrowed down its list of places in the running to 20. Los Angeles and Denver were the only cities in western states on the list.
“Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation,” Amazon spokeswoman Holly Sullivan said in a statement.
Amazon will now dive deeper into each proposal, request additional information and evaluate the feasibility of a future partnership that can accommodate the company’s plans, Sullivan said.
Sullivan said Amazon expects to make a final decision sometime this year.
The Seattle-based company in October had received as many as 238 proposals from governments in Canada, Mexico and across the United States vying to become the second home of the e-commerce giant.
Amazon has said it plans to pour $5B into the new headquarters and hire 50,000 people in full-time, high-paying positions.
Not much is known about Los Angeles’ pitch to Amazon — the county kept its bid close to the vest. But for a county of 10 million residents, Amazon’s presence would be a boon to the local economy.
The LAEDC previously said the bid “contains nine separate and distinct sites located throughout Los Angeles County, each of which meets the specific requirements listed in the Amazon RFP.”
Allen said the county’s proposal highlighted the area’s large and highly educated talent pool and education pipeline, logistics infrastructure, transit connectivity, global connectedness, quality of life and cultural fit.
“We look forward to working with Amazon in this next phase of their site selection process as they delve deeper into the benefits of locating their HQ2 in the LA region,” he said.
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