By Chip Brownlee
Alabama Political Reporter
Despite creative efforts from Birmingham and Huntsville, Amazon didn’t choose any Alabama city when narrowing down the list of candidates for its second headquarters.
Huntsville and Birmingham both vied for headquarters, Birmingham even going so far as to put a massive Amazon “big box” on one of its city streets as part of it’s “BringAtoB” initiative.
The Washingtonian ranked Birmingham’s public campaign No. 1 in a list of nine cities, and Mashable listed Huntsville as an “underdog.”
Amazon named 20 cities that are on its shortlist for its new headquarters, which could bring $5 billion and 50,000 jobs to the city that will be the new home of its HQ2.
The Top 20 cities were:
- Atlanta, GA
- Austin, TX
- Boston, MA
- Chicago, IL
- Columbus, OH
- Dallas, TX
- Denver, CO
- Indianapolis, IN
- Los Angeles, CA
- Miami, FL
- Montgomery County, MD
- Nashville, TN
- Newark, NJ
- New York City, NY
- Northern Virginia, VA
- Philadelphia, PA
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Raleigh, NC
- Toronto, ON
- Washington D.C.
Amazon laid out some requests for proposals, which included a metro area of more than 1 million people, a “stable and business-friendly environment” and an “urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent.”
An additional 53,000 jobs and $38 billion in investment were expected to result from Amazon’s initial investment.
Birmingham was the only Alabama city with a metro population of more than 1 million people.
Amazon’s 20 finalist list narrows the pool from the more than 238 cities in the U.S. and Canada that applied for the headquarters.
Alabama did recently get a major economic development win, though, when Toyota and Mazda announced that Huntsville would be the home of a new manufacturing facility that would create 4,000 jobs.
