The mystery of Amazon HQ2 has finalists who see clues everywhere

During the Labor Day weekend, a club promoter named Purple posted a picture on Instagram from the LIV nightclub in Miami. In front of a graffiti wall of names and a single "Life Is Beautiful" sticker, Purple's arm was resting on the shoulders of Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, whose pants matched the name of the host.

"It's not every day that you meet the richest guy in the world," wrote Purple on Instagram. "What a pleasure."

But when the Miami Herald covered celebrity, her worries turned to practice: "Could this be good news for the Miami HQ2?"

Friday has marked a year since Amazon announced its search for a second headquarters, a project called HQ2, which, according to the company, will bring $ 5 billion in investments and 50,000 jobs well. paid in the region of his choice. No city has yet been crowned, media, politicians and communities of the country are left reading between the Instagram lines.

People find clues for the 20 candidate cities pretty much everywhere. Could the Dean of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science resign to run a Pittsburgh HQ2? Is this a sign that Alaska Airlines, the local airline in Seattle, has announced a non-stop daily flight to Columbus, Ohio? So many people have wondered about an Amazon job offer in Newark, New Jersey, for "director of urban planning and development" that Amazon has made a rare public statement, claiming that C & A Was a job for his Audible division, already in the city.

"It's the big revelation, like" Who killed J.R. "It's that kind of accumulation."

After receiving 238 offers for HQ2, Amazon reduced the list to 20 cities in January. He visited each at the end of the winter and spring, which many local media have covered. But since then, everything has come and gone has been largely ignored, thanks to the non-disclosure agreements signed by the municipal authorities and development agencies with the company.

While the six weeks that Amazon gave cities to submit their initial proposal were deemed quick by officials, the second round of auctions required much more custom work. The follow-up since then has been even more specific, such as the resumption of models to assess what would happen if Amazon changed the scope of the project, said Sam Bailey, who runs HQ2's bid for Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

Some economic and urban development officials seem tired of waiting.

"It's likely that every dinner they attend, every neighborhood meeting is going on," Pearlstein said. "They're probably fed up with wanting to stall" when they were asked about the last one.

Those whose cities are not selected will be eager to move forward, using what they have learned during the process.

"Amazon's comments are highly relevant and can help shape public policy, economic development and housing investment strategies for growing economies across the United States," Bailey said. "If the eastern time zone was a big problem for them, I can not change that. But I can help the political leaders to modify their plans for the development of the manpower.

An Amazon spokeswoman said Thursday that the company pledged to choose a location this year.

Silence over the decision – which could affect local housing and employment markets, not to mention the culture of the city – has led residents and even some public servants to fill in the information vacuum they could muster.

Some even act on their intuitions.

Eric Fidler, a software developer, lives next to one of the sites, Washington, DC, proposed for the headquarters. He was so optimistic that he invested in three real estate companies that he thought would benefit if Amazon chose the region. Then, he thought he had received a HQ2 crumb when he heard a recruiter from Amazon's retail division, who does not have a significant engineering presence locally.

He followed up with the recruiter and learned that the job was in Palo Alto or Seattle. But he was not dissuaded.

"Some people do fantastic football," Fidler said. "I prefer to speculate on Amazon."

The District Council of Columbia has also begun to play guessing games. The Amazon site usually displays a picture of an employee's dog if a user accesses a broken link on the site. The official Twitter account of the board recently tweeted a screenshot of an Amazon webpage consisting of a mix of black and white called Bowser, who shares a name with the mayor, Muriel Bowser.

A tenuous link, indeed. But this has not proven to be an obstacle to some public speculation.

"I can not decide if this bodes well for DC's chances of Amazon HQ2," tweeted the board.

Karen Weise is a New York Times writer.