From a locational point of view, I’m wondering about Atlanta: lots of transport connections including that airport, is on the other side of the continent, warmer… I don’t know enough about the city itself to say whether it’s an advantage or not.
But I’m cheering for Toronto. 
We’ve got cultural diversity out the yin-yang, decent healthcare, a stable banking system, and connections to just about anywhere.
Apparently the Toronto bid did not involve tax breaks. Hmmm.
Here is what I would want if I were Bezos:
a. Shipping/Flight access to Europe, S. America, Africa for people and freight.
b. Political access. To either the State government or the Federal government
c. Big City – Symphonies, transportation, one that knows how to cater to a truly wealthy lifestyle. This city will be the second home to the world’s wealthiest man, after all.
Toronto, ON - Good chance.
Columbus OH - It was an honor being nominated. (Counter: If Amazon moved here, they would immediately be the biggest game in town. Maybe Bezos wants control of a city? If so, Columbus would be easy pickings.)
Indianapolis IN - See Columbus. (But, really: no chance)
Chicago IL - Chicago has all the pieces, but none of the pizazz of the other large cities.
Denver, CO - Why? Middle of the country, not that far from Seattle, near no major center of power. Denver would be the most surprising choice, imho.
Nashville TN - See Columbus.
Los Angeles, CA - No. It’s on the West Coast. They already have an HQ on the west coast.
Austin TX - Too small.
Dallas TX - A Southern Chicago, this time without the water network.
Miami FL - If there were odds, I’d be interested in seeing Miami’s. Tons of land, business friendly state, shipping access to Europe, Africa, S America.
Atlanta GA - Atlanta stole the 100-year Olympics from Athens, Greece, but I don’t think they’ll get HQ2. More of a dark horse candidate than Miami.
“Northern Virginia” - Hmmm
Montgomery County MD - Hmmmmmm
Raleigh NC - Wear your best dress, it’s the only chance you’ll get to use it.
Philadelphia PA - I’m just thinking that if you are a Seattle company and you’re placing your HQ2 2,800 miles away from HQ1, you might as well go the remaining 90 miles and land in one of the greatest cities in the world. Sorry, Philly.
Pittsburgh PA - Nice shout-out, but no.
Newark NJ - See, Philly, but Newark has a better shot if Bezos wants to control a city. I’ll place them in my top-10, but really only because they’re close to NYC.
New York NY - A top 3 contender, just because it’s NYC. (Well, top-4. Or top-2, depending upon how you wish to look at it. See below.)
Boston MA - To be quite frank, it’s cold, it’s not NY, and it’s not Miami. I get there’s a lot of brainpower here, but people can be bought and moved. I just don’t see Bezos wanting to travel from rain to snow every year if he doesn’t have to, and I don’t think Boston offers enough advantages to overcome that. NYC and DC do.
Washington DC - With three locations in the DC metro area, one wonders how heavily “must be near political power” was weighted in the scoring. I can imagine the three governments throwing together an “Amazon Action Committee”, charged with coordinating the bid elements among all three entities. If this happens, DC (area) easily becomes the odds-on favorite… and I think it is already.
So, my top 10:
1-3. DC Area (If I had to choose one, I would go with Montgomery County, MD. This would do three things:
… a. Make them immediately the biggest company in the State of Maryland ($136 billion vs $47 (Lockheed Martin)),
… b. Give them access to DC,
… c. Give them access to Annapolis (see (a), above).)
The big issue is the lack of water, but right to the north is Baltimore. DC is a city which can easily cater to wealth and power, so this one meets my top three criteria in spades.
The biggest/busiest Amazon fulfillment center (warehouse) is in Columbus and they have 2 of them. So it’s already the biggest game in town, for working class jobs. It would be interesting to me if they could bring in more professional/middle class jobs.
I don’t know, does already having 2 warehouses make it less or more likely for a HQ?
I saw Amazon taking some heat on Twitter (and wherever the twitter links lead to) because of the tax incentives they received compared to how many employees they supposedly added to SNAP in OH. But the numbers didn’t look right to me as their starting wage is too high for SNAP unless someone has a family of 5+ and no one else works. I assume all the SNAP employees are voluntarily part time. I guess you could say they “should” pay enough for someone with 5,6, 10 kids (where does it end?) to not qualify for SNAP, but when it comes to similar jobs NO ONE does. Even with their recently announced increases, WalMart still starts about $4/hr less than Amazon pays for entry level warehouse jobs, for example.
I also noticed that all the seasonal (and regular) warehouse jobs for all the Limited Company brands and similar places started paying a lot more after Amazon moved into to town. The ads for $9-10/hr jobs went up to $13-17. Some people are lamenting the "death of retail"in the area, but those jobs and those people (including the overly loved Wexner family) weren’t exactly great.
As far as other things go, Facebook is coming to Columbus right now and there are a lot of companies in banking, insurance, and other stuff. Most of the people I know with “real jobs” do something tech related. So, while nothing is as big as Amazon, it’s not like Columbus OH is some wasteland with no businesses and nothing going on.
So am I. We can add in an educated workforce from multiple universities and colleges in southern Ontario (especially in STEM fields, well-represented by U of Waterloo, but other universities and colleges are no slouches in this area either), and excellent public transit.
As for the snowstorms mentioned upthread–as a former Torontonian, who lived there for over forty years, I can attest that winter weather is not a factor. The worst I ever recall was January of 1999, when we got about four feet of snow in three days. The city still moved, people still went to work, transit kept moving. Anybody who discounts Toronto because of winter, obviously has not been to Toronto in winter. Toronto, and its residents, are prepared for it.
My top 5 would be DC, Miami, Toronto, Denver and Northern VA.
I was just talking to a Discovery channel guy and about half the conversation was how boring Maryland was. Beyond that it seems obvious that they are strongly drawn to the DC area and without knowing the area it seems it would be better to be in the city then right outside. Miami gets the benefit of an easy draw for employyes particularly those who don’t like winter and it’s on the opposite side of the country. Toronto is a great city and not in the US which is looking like a good thing if you want to trade with non us countries or have non us employees. Denver is centrally located and has good freeway and rail access to most of the country and a great airport and has been the fastest growing metro area since they legalized pot.
Wait, there is mass transit?
I tried getting some information on bus schedules when I was there last year and got only blank looks, but I don’t know how much was a lack of bus schedules and how much a lack of bussing culture.
People keep bringing up the shipping stuff. Forget it. This has nothing to do with that side of business.
Think mainly in terms of tech employees.
The Atlanta vs. Raleigh pairing is interesting. Atlanta is a really great draw for a lot of companies. Some companies have moved their headquarters there. E.g., UPS moved theirs from Seattle to Atlanta. Hmmm.
But in terms of tech folk, highly educated workforce, colleges, etc. it doesn’t do well on a per capita (note!) basis. Raleigh does better. But the number of “capita” is smaller.
A lot of other cities on the list: Miami, Columbus, Nashville etc. do worse in this department. I think they are on the list only to assert to the likely places that Amazon has options and the locals better ante up some good deals if they want to win.
The city also has to be an area where tech people want to move to. Austin does well here. Chicago and most of the other northern cities are going to be ruled out here.
I think housing/real estate issues will also be a factor. Amazon has seen what it has done to Seattle’s real estate market and will want some place cheap, with lots of growth available and officials friendly to that. The southeast wins big here.
Actually, they moved from Greenwich Connecticut in 1991. (And then I saw an article in which one of the execs said one regret was the poor quality of the schools in the Atlanta area, compared to Connecticut.)
My guess is that the finalists are (not necessarily in order):
The Top 5:
Austin
Dallas
Atlanta
Northern Virginia
Boston
The Next 5:
Miami
Newark, NJ
Nashville
Denver
Los Angeles
The only surprise on the list so far is that San Francisco is already out of the running. I didn’t expect SF to be the final choice, but I didn’t expect them to be out of the running at this stage.
I suspect that the final choice won’t necessarily be a ‘tech’ city. Amazon is trying to create an online and in-store shopping ecosystem, so the factors that influence this decision go well beyond just having a city with techie know-how. It’s obviously a factor, but not the factor.
I’d guess the DMV, Boston, or Chicago. Probably in that order.
Schools are definitely an important consideration when trying to recruit and keep talent, and yet businesses typically think about this sort of thing after the fact.
Here is an interesting article by the Washington Post looking at the criteria that Amazon said they were looking for and where the top 20 ranked to determine what the most important ones were. Because of that they have Boston, DC, Denver and Dallas as the cities that most meet what they think Amazon’s criteria are.
DC seems to make everyone’s short list so thats probably were I’d bet if i had to pick one. I’m hoping Denver wins though, at least after I but my new house there.
North Carolina is rapidly turning into southern Northern Virginia.
I’d really put Raleigh much higher than everyone else is. And the good news is that it’s practically next door when you need to show up and have a talk with a Senator.
We have buses, but they aren’t exactly convenient. Nashville MTA
StG
One major advantage of Toronto is that they can get a work permit for a foreign tech worker in two weeks. I recently read about a company that left NY for Montreal mainly for that reason. Downside for Toronto is that housing costs are out of site.
Relatively cheap housing is a real plus for Philadelphia. Fifteen years ago, my son bought a three storey house there for about $200K that would have cost 1/2 to 1 million in many of the cities in the running.
Forget DC. No space and you cant build skyscrapers there. Maryland and NoVa are so freaking crowded already that roads are gridlock 24/7. They’d have to build it in West VA to find space and have a way to drive there that wouldn’t take a three hours drive… Three hours would be pushing it.
Also a great movie industry, high-end medical research, concentrated aerospace and automotive industries, a grid powered 90% by nuclear and renewables (the other 10% is natural gas–no coal!), a big push into AI and autonomous vehicles, restaurants of every variety, definitely LGBTQ±friendly, an executive/regional airport right downtown, headquarters of many media organizations, and a thriving Esperanto club. 
Bezos owns the Washington Post, skyscrapers aren’t required, and they chose three locations around DC and no fewer than 9 cities along, or with quick access to, I-95. Their preference has been tipped, imho, and it leans to DC or NYC metro areas.
My wife and I live in the greater Philadelphia metroplex. She said NPR indicated Philly was a done deal. We will see.