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Amazon is reportedly close to selecting the winner of its second-headquarters project, known as HQ2.
Or, should I say "winners"?
It turns out, if The New York Times is right, that Amazon is close to agreeing to split its HQ2 project among two cities: New York City and Arlington, Virginia. The two cities are reportedly receiving an as-yet-unknown portion of the 50,000 employees and $ 5 billion investment Amazon promised to winners of the project.
Wait, huh? That was not part of the plan.
If Amazon selects two cities for HQ2, as reported, then everything Amazon promised goes out the window. What makes this different from Amazon or Los Angeles?
Will the company refer to both sites, which are hundreds of miles from each other, as HQ2? Or are we just supposed to know that HQ2 has the entire eastern seaboard – which is accessible from Amtrak's Acela service between New York and Washington, DC.
In fact, Amazon already has a sizable number of employees in both the DC area and New York City. The Times says it's the largest number of employees outside Seattle, and it employs thousands of workers in each city.
Is not Amazon stretching the meaning of the word "headquarters" here? What's the difference between having a satellite office?
There may be a distinction for Amazon employees, but that's unlikely to be the case for the tax-paying public – which is going to be a big part of the bill thanks to the Amazon tax incentives.
Read more:People are furious about New York City and Virginia after months of deliberation
Critics of Amazon's long-drawn-out HQ2 selection process already asked that a "second headquarters" could even exist. Dividing the project into two equal-size headquarters just adds fuel to the argument that the entire process is a ploy to the pits against one another to maximize incentives.
It also breaks Amazon's original mandate for the project that HQ2 would be a "full equal" to the Seattle headquarters. If it's separate, it's not equal.
Amazon hyped up its HQ2 investment so much that cities are willing to do anything for the chance of landing it. Amazon probably at least figured out that it would be easier to count Did not Jump to the chance to get Amazon in the backyard, the strategy shifted to just maximizing gains.
While we have not yet been able to do so, we have offered to provide you with the services you need, we can safely assume it totaled in the trillions.
City and state leaders jumped at the chance for what they saw as a high-profile win- The upsides for local communities and governments – economic or otherwise
If they are able to get along with essentially robbing Virginia and New York of millions of dollars in what are they originally promised, what else are they capable of?
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