2018 will prove to be a monumental year for one major metropolitan area in North America.
Amazon is set to determine the location for its second corporate headquarters campus – dubbed HQ2 – in the coming months.
The online retail giant will make a massive expansion with HQ2. Amazon expects to invest over $5 billion into the project and create approximately 50,000 jobs.
238 proposals were submitted from cities and regions in 54 states, provinces, districts and territories across North America, according to Amazon.
Dallas-Fort Worth was among the many regions to step up and put forward its bid ahead of Amazon’s October 19, 2017 deadline. The DFW pitch was a regional one at this stage, with at least 35 sites identified as potential building sites in at least a dozen North Texas cities.
It is widely expected that at some point prior to announcing its final decision, Amazon will pare down its large list of candidates. But the question of when that might happen remains a mystery – even to the team responsible for pitching Dallas-Fort Worth.
“We know they will make a choice in 2018 where they want to put the second headquarters, but as far as what happens between now and then your guess is as good as mine,” said Jessica Heer, with a laugh.
Heer is the Senior Vice President of Talent Attraction for the Dallas Regional Chamber, an agency that represents the business interests of approximately 1,100 businesses in North Texas. The Dallas Regional Chamber took the lead in making the initial, regional pitch for Dallas-Fort Worth.
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Heer emphasized that the Amazon project is just one of many balls her agency is trying to keep in the air; for example, they’ve been involved in helping to entice approximately 70 corporations to relocate their headquarters to North Texas since 2010.
“We are waiting for the next steps [on Amazon HQ2] but we are consistently working with projects that are looking at this region for relocation, outside of just that one,” Heer said.
“We are always ready for the next step on a project. If Amazon called tomorrow and said, ‘Hey, we want to come in the next day,’ we are ready to go,” Heer stated.
