Today marks one year since Amazon announced its search for a second headquarters, or HQ2, which the company says will bring $5 billion in investment and 50,000 high-paying jobs to the area it chooses.
But with no city crowned yet, news outlets, politicians and communities around the country are left reading between the Instagram lines, The New York Times reports.
And people are finding clues for the 20 candidate cities just about anywhere.
Could the dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science be resigning to run a Pittsburgh HQ2? Is it a sign that Alaska Airlines, the hometown carrier in Seattle, announced a daily nonstop flight to Columbus, Ohio? So many people asked about an Amazon job posting in Newark for “Urban Planning and Development Director” that Amazon made a rare public statement, saying it was a job for its Audible division, which is already in the city.
“It’s the big reveal, like ‘Who killed J.R.?’” says Alex Pearlstein, vice president at Market Street Services, which helps cities develop strategies to be attractive to new employers. “It’s that kind of buildup.”
After receiving 238 bids for HQ2, Amazon narrowed the list to 20 cities in January. It toured each in the late winter and spring, which many local news outlets covered. But since then, any back and forth has largely been out of the public eye, thanks to the nondisclosure agreements city officials and development agencies have signed with the company.
An Amazon spokesman says the company is committed to choosing a location this year.
