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Amazon has been based in Seattle since its founding in 1994, but the e-commerce giant is planning a second headquarters elsewhere in the U.S., and Los Angeles is officially in the running.
Mayor Eric Garcetti's office confirmed that Los Angeles was planning to bid on the new Amazon headquarters, with Garcetti calling L.A. "the perfect place for a company like Amazon to find talented workers, and an environment that nurtures growth and innovation," in a statement emailed to LAist on Thursday.
Amazon announced plans to put $5 billion toward the construction of its second headquarters in a request for proposals from potential bidders. "We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement on Thursday. Amazon will give priority to cities to cities with more than one million residents that are within 45 minutes of an international airport, according to the L.A. Times. Other cities planning to bid on the new headquarters include New York, Chicago and Atlanta, CNBC reports.
If selected to host Amazon's new offices, Los Angeles could gain up to 50,000 new full-time jobs. The city is already home to Amazon's thriving film and TV division, Amazon Studios, whose offices are located in Santa Monica (and could soon be moving to Culver Studios' famed Gone With The Wind mansion.)
Not everyone is likely to be enthused about the possibility of Amazon expanding to Los Angeles, though. The tech-industry gentrification driving up prices in Venice's "Silicon Beach" would likely increase with Amazon's arrival, and Curbed raises the question of where L.A. would even fit an 8-million-square-foot Amazon complex. Nonetheless, it appears L.A. will fight to win the Amazon bid by the October 19th deadline.
