By Jeffrey Dastin
(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc on Monday said it had leased office space and posted several jobs for its second headquarters outside Washington, D.C., the start of more than a decade of investment and hiring that cities across North America had sought.
In a blog post, the world’s largest online retailer said it was on track to create 400 jobs at the future Arlington, Virginia campus this year. It said the new hires will work out of a temporary space on Crystal Drive in June, as the company aims to open its first building in the fall.
These jobs had been coveted by hundreds of communities from Canada to Mexico since 2017, when Seattle-based Amazon announced it would spend more than $5 billion (£3.87 billion) and create up to 50,000 positions at a second campus dubbed ‘HQ2.’
The company ultimately split the prize between greater Washington and New York, the U.S. political and financial capitals, after more than a year of contestants’ publicity stunts and promises of tax breaks to garner Amazon’s attention.
In February, Amazon scrapped its plans for New York after local opposition to its proposed campus. Under the Virginia deal, the company will add 25,000 jobs and receive performance-based incentives of $573 million, including an average $22,000 for each job it creates.
So far, the jobs posted include four focussed on procurement and one in human resources.
Ardine Williams, who authored Amazon’s blog post, said she had recently moved to Arlington from Seattle and is in charge of workforce development at the company.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; editing by Tom Brown and Phil Berlowitz)
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