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Krewson: St. Louis putting together proposal to bring Amazon here

Amazon shipping center in Edwardsville
Jo Mannies/St. Louis Public Radio
Amazon shipping center in Edwardsville

St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson says the region is planning to make a “competitive bid” to bring Amazon’s second headquarters here.

The company said Thursday that it will spend more than $5 billion to build another headquarters in North America to house as many as 50,000 employees. It plans to stay in its sprawling Seattle headquarters and the new space will be "a full equal" of its current home, said founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Amazon shipping center in Edwardsville
Credit Jo Mannies/St. Louis Public Radio
Amazon shipping center in Edwardsville

Amazon's announcement highlights how fast the company is expanding and is certain to create a scramble among cities and states vying to make the short list. They have a little more than a month to apply through a special website, and the company said it will make a final decision next year.  

In a statement, Krewson said: “We’re on it.” St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger says the county will also be involved in putting the proposal together.

Missouri’s acting director of the state Department of Economic Development, Rob Dixon, told the media Thursday at Gov. Eric Greitens' economic development conference in St. Louis that it’s an exciting opportunity for the state.

“This company can go anywhere it wants around the world. We should make the case as to why Missouri and what assets we offer and I know we’ll continue that conversation,” Dixon said.

“It’s a large project, there’s a lot of jobs, it’s a global brand that we all know and hear about quite a bit. I can’t get into any specifics about what we will or won’t be doing on that.”

Amazon didn't hint about where it might land, but its requirements could rule out some places: It wants to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and wants to be able to expand that headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade. That's about the same size as its current home in Seattle. Co-headquarters, though, often come about as a result of mergers.

Amazon said its search is open to any metropolitan area in North America that meets the parameters — the city itself doesn't necessarily have to be a million people — but declined to say how open it was to going outside of the United States.

"We want to find a city that is excited to work with us and where our customers, employees, and the community can all benefit," the company said on its search website, about why it was choosing its second headquarters through a public process.Loading...

Bezos has crowdsourced major decisions before — in June, just before Amazon announced its plan to buy organic grocer Whole Foods, the billionaire took to Twitter seeking ideas for a philanthropic strategy to give away some of his fortune. And tech companies have been known to set places in competition with each other: In vying to land Google's ultra-fast broadband network, many cities used stunts and gimmickry to get the company's attention. Topeka even informally renamed itself "Google, Kansas."

In just the last month, Amazon announced plans to build three warehouses that pack and ship packages in New York, Ohio and Oregon. And it recently paid close to $14 billion for Whole Foods and its more than 465 stores. The company plans to hire 100,000 people by the middle of next year, adding to its current worldwide staff of more than 380,000.

Amazon's current campus in Seattle takes up 8.1 million square feet, has 33 buildings and 24 restaurants and is home to more than 40,000 employees. At the second headquarters, Amazon said it will hire up to 50,000 new full-time employees over the next 15 years who would have an average pay of more than $100,000 a year.

Amazon's website about the search lauds the benefits it can bring to a community. And Amazon's arrival could transform an area: Until 10 years ago, the neighborhood near Seattle's campus just north of downtown was dotted with auto parts stores and low-rent apartments. Now the area is a booming pocket of high-rise office complexes, sleek apartment buildings and tony restaurants.

Amazon's rise has not been without local critics, who say the influx of mostly well-heeled tech workers has caused housing prices to skyrocket, clogged the streets with traffic and changed the city for the worse. The Seattle Times reported Thursday that the median price for a house in August in Seattle was $730,000, up almost 17 percent in a year.

Follow Bill on Twitter: @billraack

Follow Maria on Twitter: @radioaltman

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Altman came to St. Louis Public Radio from Dallas where she hosted All Things Considered and reported north Texas news at KERA. Altman also spent several years in Illinois: first in Chicago where she interned at WBEZ; then as the Morning Edition host at WSIU in Carbondale; and finally in Springfield, where she earned her graduate degree and covered the legislature for Illinois Public Radio.
Raack has been in radio for over 20 years. After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas in 1983, he worked at commercial radio stations in Kansas and then Illinois. He moved to public radio in 1990, joining the staff of WILL-AM/FM in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, as a host/reporter and then as news director in 1993. He returned to his hometown of St. Louis in 1995 as the local host of St. Louis Public Radio's
Maria Altman
Maria is a reporter at St. Louis Public Radio, specializing in business and economic issues. Previously, she was a newscaster during All Things Considered and has been with the station since 2004. Maria's stories have been featured nationally on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition, as well as on Marketplace.