Enterprise Florida CEO Pete Antonacci was tapped for the job only this July, but he’s now consumed with his latest challenge: Seeing that Florida snags the second headquarters for Amazon, the massive online retailer.
“Amazon HQ2 will be Amazon’s second headquarters in North America,” the company says on its website, where it asks for applications from economic development organizations. The original headquarters is in Seattle.
“We expect to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs – it will be a full equal to our current campus in Seattle,” Amazon says, adding that HQ2 is ”expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.”
The competition will be tough: Philadelphia, Dallas and San Francisco are just a few of the big cities seeking to be Amazon’s next home. In Florida, Orlando, Miami and other metro areas have expressed interest.
“The good thing is the company agreed to postpone our application deadline for another week,” Antonacci said, referring to the lingering recovery from Hurricane Irma.
He spoke to Florida Politics after giving a presentation on the governor’s constitutional authority to a committee of the Constitution Revision Commission.
“The communities that are interested are working to put their (own) projects together,” he said. “We’re going to submit a state application that has a number of components,” focusing on the benefits of the various communities.
“It’s an indication that the state stands behind the (local) applications,” Antonacci added. “If they happen to choose one or two to go to the next level, we will participate in pushing those applications to the end.”
Source Florida Politics
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