Amazon announces new headquarters in New York City, Virginia

Amazon.com(NEW YORK) — Amazon on Tuesday said it chose New York City and a suburb of Washington, D.C., as the locations for its new headquarters.

The Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, just across the East River from Manhattan, and Crystal City in northern Virginia, about a mile from the Pentagon, were selected by the retail giant after an extensive search.

Amazon will invest $5 billion in the new sites, which will create 50,000 new jobs, the company said in a statement.

“We are excited to build new headquarters in New York City and Northern Virginia,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, in a statement. “These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue inventing for customers for years to come. The team did a great job selecting these sites, and we look forward to becoming an even bigger part of these communities.”

Amazon is calling the area where it’s building in northern Virginia “National Landing.” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam confirmed the renaming of Crystal City in an interview Tuesday on CNBC.

Nashville was also picked as Amazon’s new “Center of Excellence for its Operations business, which is responsible for the company’s customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain, and other similar activities.” Five thousand jobs will be added there.

Hiring at these new locations will begin in 2019.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

CEO Jeff Bezos said last year he was seeking a metropolitan location with at least 1 million residents for the so-called HQ2, which sparked fierce competition among potential suitors. Amazon said it had narrowed its list of potential locations to 20 in January.

“We expect to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs — it will be a full equal to our current campus in Seattle,” Amazon said in a press release announcing the project. “In addition to Amazon’s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.”

A source close to the negotiations told ABC News last week that when Amazon executives visited New York, “Long Island City made a real impression. It’s an actual neighborhood. It looks a little like Seattle, with bars and restaurants. It’s clearly what the company is looking for.”

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