NEW YORK CITY—The City of New York has submitted its formal proposal for Amazon's second corporate headquarters and promoted four possible landing sites for the e-commerce giant—Midtown West, Lower Manhattan, Long Island City and the Brooklyn Tech Triangle.
Amazon had set a deadline of today for submissions to its Request for Proposals for a second corporate headquarters to its operations in Seattle. The first phase of the project involves 500,000 square feet, but the overall initiative is promised to bring the winning bidder more than $5 billion in investment and 50,000 jobs.
The proposal, prepared in partnership with the State of New York, culled together more than two-dozen proposals from locations around the city. The city's submission touting thee four districts met the specific requirements of the Amazon RFP— 500,000 square feet of commercial space by 2019; accommodating up to 8 million square feet of commercial space for 50,000 jobs within a 15-minute radius; proximity to transit, highways and airports and connectivity to surrounding mixed-use neighborhoods.
In his letter to Jeff Bezos, chairman and CEO of Amazon, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “The brightest minds and innovators want to live in New York. The people who live and come here experience a quality of life unlike anywhere else, from our incomparable public spaces and cultural institutions to our dynamic neighborhoods. This is the safest big city in America, an open city that welcomes people fro every corner of the country and the globe.”
The city also touted a host of demographic data points in its Amazon bid:
• 2.3 million New Yorkers have a bachelor's degree or above, more than Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston combined;
• The New York Metro area tech workforce is the largest in the nation with 296,000 workers, compared to 150,000 in the San Francisco area;
• NYC has more Fortune 500 companies than any other city;
• The city boasts 9,000 startups that it says are “changing how we live and work;”
• The region has105 institutions of higher learning;
• NYC possesses a diverse array of industry leaders from construction to fashion to tech who have committed to forging partnerships with Amazon;
• The city is strong in key sectors of interest to Amazon: tech, media, advertising, fashion, advanced manufacturing.
The proposal also cited Amazon's already existing and planned operations in New York City—a 470,000-square-foot distribution center at 7 W. 34th St., a 40,000-square-foot fashion studio at 35 Kent Ave. in Brooklyn, the 4,000-square-foot Amazon Books facility in Columbus Circle and 92,500-square feet of space at 1350 Sixth Ave. Amazon recently announced that it was leasing 360,000 square feet of space at 5 Manhattan West and is building a $100-million 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Staten Island.
The New York City bid will not be the only submission from New York State and the region. Westchester County has announced its intent to submit a proposal for the HQ2 project. In addition, published reports have indicated the cities of Buffalo and Rochester plan to submit a joint proposal.
To highlight its RFP submission, a number of venues and buildings were lit up in “Amazon Orange,” including One World Trade, 4 Times Square and the Empire State Building.
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John Jordan
John Jordan is a veteran journalist with 36 years of print and digital media experience.
