Amazon officials visited the greater Washington, D.C., area last week, The Washington Post reported Monday, in yet another indication that the tech giant is highly considering the nation’s capital and the surrounding region for its second headquarters.
The company whittled down its search for the location for its next massive business campus, known as HQ2, to “20 metropolitan areas” in mid-January, flaunting a $5 billion investment and thousands and thousands of jobs.
Amazon listed Washington D.C, Montgomery County, Md., and Northern Virginia as three of 20 finalists, meaning technically there is better than a one-third chance of it choosing at least one of the aforementioned regions.
Representatives for the company and top city officials gathered in the respective areas, according to The Washington Post. Amazon higher-ups, for example, reportedly met Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for dinner and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam for breakfast.
A local news site outside of Washington, D.C., recently revealed that a somewhat old story detailing how Arlington County, Va. won an environmental award was experiencing an unusually high amount of views from an internal Amazon server. Considering these factors, the larger area, or potentially separate portions of it, could be considered a frontrunner.
In fact, Amazon is reportedly mulling over the prospect of at least nine sites in the D.C. area, as officials like Bowser and Northam try to court the conglomerate.
“We’ve had some really good discussions with Amazon,” Northam said Friday in Richmond, according to WaPo. “They were up in Northern Virginia Monday and Tuesday. We showed them four sites up there. I was very proud of my cabinet members and [the Virginia Economic Development Partnership], and I think that Amazon was impressed with the presentation we gave them.”
Many, though, see such courting from the government as “depressing,” since it purportedly show hows capitalism (more aptly “technocapitalism”) can have perverse effects, like excessive tax breaks.
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