Amazon plans on getting a 2nd HQ, cities to bid

The e-commerce giant said that it will spend more than $5 billion to build another headquarters in North America. Amazon will stay put in its sprawling Seattle headquarters, and the new space will be "a full equal" with as many as 50,000 jobs, said founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos. The positions will pay an average of more than $100,000 annually, Amazon said.

Cities including Chicago, Dallas and San Diego, along with states like Michigan, were vocal about their interest, the first of many places expected to consider submitting proposals. Amazon has laid out in meticulous detail what it is looking for, even acknowledging that new laws may be required to get the high level of incentives necessary to hold the company’s attention.

Those considerations and more are laid out in Amazon’s detailed wish list for its new project, which it is calling HQ2. In addition to a metropolitan area with more than one million residents, Amazon insists that its new project have on-site access to mass transit, a commute of 45 minutes or less to an international airport and easy access to a major highway or arterial road — no more than two miles.

The move for proposal requests follows other big-name tech companies shopping around for sites to place its buildings and factories. Notably, Tesla asked local governments for millions in incentives before settling on Nevada for its tax benefits which could total nearly $1.3 billion over the next 20 years. Meanwhile, Wisconsin lured Apple supplier Foxconn to open a production factory there by offering up to $3 billion in tax breaks over 15 years.