Chicago, Philadelphia, and Raleigh were the actual Amazon HQ2 finalists

I started reading Amazon Unbound over the weekend. One interesting tidbit is that the finalists for Amazon HQ2 were Chicago, Philadelphia, and Raleigh.

That is, until Bezos rejected the committee's recommendation. New York City and Northern Virginia were chosen, with New York City later abandoned… but that didn’t stop them from hiring massively in New York City despite the changes.

Some highlights…

• The original finalists were Chicago, Philadelphia, and Raleigh. According to the HQ2 committee, “The locations do not have the largest concentration of existing tech talent but we believe they have the foundation for talent growth across our many businesses…”

  • The “top-tier” locations were Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, and Raleigh.

  • Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Toronto, and Washington, D.C., were listed in the “hotly debated” category.

• Notes on individual cities…

  • Nashville: “We all had high expectations of Nashville, but the city isn’t ready for an investment of our size.”

  • Los Angeles: “It is the world’s most congested city, does not provide geographic diversity and California is not a business-friendly state.”

  • Dallas: “They worried that choosing geographically isolated Dallas would make it more challenging to recruit top-notch talent.”

  • Atlanta: “They described the traffic congestion of Atlanta as problematic, as well as a recent move by the Georgia legislature to kill a tax exemption for Delta Air Lines’ jet fuel purchases because of the airline’s controversial decision to end discounts for National Rifle Association members after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. To Amazon, the state’s move to penalize a company for its political values was troubling.”

  • Newark: “Newark was flatly rejected because talented engineers from New York City ‘would not want to work there.’”