Amazon Opens Search for Second Headquarters City in North America -- 3rd Update

Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday it plans to open a second headquarters in North America to house up to 50,000 employees, signaling the company has no plans to slow down its torrid growth in hiring in recent years.

The Seattle-based company is seeking proposals by Oct. 19 for a location for the structure, which the company said could cost as much as $5 billion to build and operate. Amazon plans to choose a location next year.

Employees working in the new headquarters would be largely new. The jobs would be in addition to the 100,000 full-time positions Amazon announced earlier this year for creation through mid-2018, most of which are in the company's warehouses.

The second location will "be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters," Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in prepared remarks. It "will bring billions of dollars in upfront and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We're excited to find a second home."

Over the past two decades, Amazon has grown from an online bookseller founded in Mr. Bezos' garage to a sprawling tech giant. It now has a Hollywood studio, a booming device business including its artificial intelligence assistant Alexa, and a profit-driving cloud-services business.

To keep up with the expansion, the number of employees at Amazon's Seattle headquarters has grown rapidly over the past decade from a few thousand to more than 40,000. But Amazon recently has faced both space and hiring constraints as a result, according to people familiar with the company's thinking.

Amazon has struggled to attract and retain enough engineers to keep pace with the company's growth, the people said. It competes for talent in the region with Microsoft Corp., and is about 800 miles north of the heart of the tech world in California's Silicon Valley.

It is unlikely Amazon would choose a location in an area like Silicon Valley, where it would face fierce competition for engineers from companies including Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc.

Other tech giants have caused recent frenzies over new locations. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk in June hinted the electric car maker would build a new factory, while Foxconn Technology Group said in July it would be building a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin.

Amazon itself has announced many new warehouses, most recently in New York, and in August held a job fair to hire 50,000 people.

Amazon currently employs more than 200,000 people in the U.S., with about 130,000 in the company's warehouses. It already has regional offices sprinkled throughout the U.S., including in Austin, Texas; Northern Virginia; Detroit and Los Angeles. The new headquarters will be in addition to those locations.

In soliciting bids for the project, which Amazon calls HQ2, the company is prioritizing metropolitan areas with more than a million people that are within 45 minutes of an international airport and near a strong university system.

Incentives from state and local governments will be "significant factors" in its decision, Amazon said. The announcement is likely to set off a frenzy among states and municipalities eager to recruit the company. Amazon has received more than $1 billion in incentives since 2000 from state and local governments to help the company build its warehouses, according to Good Jobs First, a group that is critical of corporate tax credits.

"They're going to want a gazillion dollars in benefits," said Erik Gordon, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "It's going to be a big price tag and expectedly so, because who else can bring you tens of thousands of jobs -- good jobs -- and change the image of who you are?"

Amazon expects the new jobs, many which will be in software development, to have average compensation of more than $100,000. Mr. Gordon said cities outside of traditional technology hubs could use Amazon's headquarters to help quickly remake their image.

There are about 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. with populations of more than one million people, according to U.S. Census estimates, and more elsewhere in North America.

Communities are eager to land a flagship corporate tenant because of the positive impact on the service sector -- hospitality businesses, real-estate markets and philanthropy. Amazon's existing Seattle headquarters, which opened in 2010, has brought an additional $38 billion in investments to the local economy, the company said.

Amazon joins companies such as General Electric Co. and Boeing Co. in drawing publicity to the early stages of its selection process. The company knows its brand is strong and that it will receive aggressive proposals, said James McGraw Jr., CEO of KMK Consulting Co., a Cincinnati-based economic-development firm. "There's no downside risk of bad PR," he said.

Amazon, which has long favored growth and investments over profit, has expanded rapidly with dozens of programs, including its instant-delivery service Prime Now and AmazonFresh. The company completed its acquisition of Whole Foods last week and began overhauling the grocery chain by lowering some prices and integrating Amazon services.

Once the second headquarters is built, Amazon senior leaders will get to choose whether they locate their teams in the Seattle headquarters, HQ2 or both, the company said.

Write to Laura Stevens at laura.stevens@wsj.com and Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 07, 2017 12:01 ET (16:01 GMT)