NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has set its sights on two of the nation’s largest and most powerful metro areas, announcing Tuesday it had chosen a New York neighborhood and a suburb of Washington D.C. for its new East Coast headquarters.
The online shopping giant ended its 14-month-long competition for second headquarters by selecting Long Island City and Arlington, Virginia, as the winners. Both are waterfront communities away from overcrowded business districts, giving Amazon space to grow.
Amazon could have picked a struggling city desperate for new jobs. Instead, it went with two of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. The reason Amazon gave: they are best suited to attract the high-skilled workers the company wants. The two cities will each get 25,000 jobs that Amazon says will be paid an average of $150,000 a year.