Nashville Named Finalist For Amazon HQ2

NASHVILLE, TN -- Nashville is one of 20 cities named as a finalist for Amazon's massive HQ2 project, the online retail giant announced Thursday.

"Today we are announcing the communities that will proceed to the next step in the HQ2 process," Amazon announced via tweet. "Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity."

Amazon's announcement that it was scouting for a second headquarters beyond its main office in Seattle sparked one of the largest economic development competitions in American history.

"We are excited to have made Amazon'€™s top 20 list for a second headquarters. Over the coming weeks and months, we look forward to working more closely with Amazon to show them why Music City would be the perfect fit for their company," Metro Nashville Mayor Megan Barry tweeted after the announcement.

Nashville's bid for HQ2 was a project of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, rather than Metro Government, which allowed much of the proposal to be kept secret and away from the prying eyes of the media and others, who, were it a government project, would have had access to information via open-records requests.

The chamber has declined to release details of the proposal and the mayor's office has denied seeing the bid.

Amazon says it needs 500,000 square feet of space by 2019 and 8 million square feet in the long term for a facility, which it will consider an equal to its Seattle headquarters, that would create up to 50,000 jobs.

The 20 finalist cities are:

• Atlanta
• Austin
• Boston
• Chicago
• Columbus, Ohio
• Dallas
• Denver
• Indianapolis
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Montgomery County, Maryland
• Nashville
• Newark, N.J.
• New York City
• Northern Virginia
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Raleigh, N.C.
• Toronto
• Washington, D.C.

Photo by Olivia Lind, used with permission