The New York Times reports that Amazon will split its HQ2 between two cities, likely Long Island City, Queens and the DC suburb The Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, and Long Island City in Queens, New York, will be the joint homes of Amazon?s second, and in this case third, headquarters.
The company plans to employ 25,000 employees at each location, according to a New York Times story that suggests deals in Virginia and New York are near completion.
The unexpected decision to split the company?s second home between these two locations caps more than a year of speculation over which city would become the second home of the trillion-dollar retail giant, as well as a promised 8 million-square-foot campus, 50,000 high-paying jobs, and $5 billion in investment. Many companies have been floated as front-runners over the last few months, including Denver (which was picked by the New York Times), New York City, Atlanta, and Chicago. As soon as a Wall Street Journal story from Monday, November 5, suggested Amazon was thinking of splitting HQ2, some analysts speculated the company would choose New York City and D.C.
In February, a small website in Arlington, Virginia, ARLnow.com, set off rumors that the D.C. area was poised to win when it found an article about the area was getting significant traffic from an internal Amazon site dedicated to the headquarters search. Other reports suggested the proximity to Washington, D.C., the site of potential regulatory b...