Amazon Employees' Web Traffic Reveals Interest In Arlington Amid HQ2 Search
Amazon has been notoriously tight-lipped about where it is leaning in its search for a second headquarters, but employees may have just accidentally dropped a big hint.
A December article about Arlington County winning a top U.S. Green Building Council award received over 6,000 views last week, two months after its publication, with the vast majority coming from what appears to be an internal Amazon page discussing its HQ2 search, ARLnow reports.
Northern Virginia was one of three D.C.-area localities placed on Amazon's 20-city shortlist in January, along with the District and Montgomery County. Arlington County put forward sites in Crystal City, where developer JBG Smith owns a host of vacant buildings, and in Rosslyn, where Gould Property Co. and Vornado have been approved for the 2.5M SF Rosslyn Plaza project. Rosslyn landed a major corporate HQ last year when Nestlé chose to move its U.S. HQ to 1812 North Moore.
Northern Virginia also proposed sites in Alexandria and Herndon. Multiple Tysons developers individually submitted their own sites, but Amazon said it would only consider bids submitted by local governments. The e-commerce giant has not given a clear timeline for making its final decision on the project, a $5B investment it says will create 50,000 jobs and fill 8M SF of office space.
