After the announcement broke earlier this month that Amazon plans to build a second headquarters to compliment their existing home base in Seattle, WA, hundreds of applications flooded the company's public policy offices, trying to wow CEO Jeff Bezos and the rest of the decision-makers with attractive tax incentives and so on. Today, CNBC is reporting that the e-commerce giant has narrowed down the list of potential candidates down to 20 cities, with some inclusions that may surprise a few people.
Several hip-hop hotbeds are represented on the list, with Atlanta, New York City, Los Angeles and Miami all making the cut. Toronto, Denver, Boston and Washington, D.C. could also be attractive options for Amazon, who may look to spread their wings outside of a traditional metropolis and perhaps take more a stranglehold over the local job scene. According to the report, $5 billion will be spent building the place and, when operational, the second headquarters will employ 50,000 there. There's no word on whether those will all be new hires, but the opportunity is too good for many cities to want to pass up.
One notable city that didn't make the cut was Detroit, a location that multiple people on social media were lobbying for Amazon to take a hard look at. It was one of the major U.S. hubs that continues to be hit hard by economic strife in some areas, and the addition of the company's new headquarters could've helped combat that issue, in the eyes of some anyways.
Check out the entire list of candidates below.
Atlanta
Austin, Texas
Boston
Chicago
Columbus, Ohio
Dallas
Denver
Indianapolis
Los Angeles
Miami
Montgomery County, Md.
Nashville, Tenn.
Newark, N.J.
New York City
Northern Virginia
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Raleigh, N.C.
Toronto
Washington, D.C.