A New Study Predicts the Top 13 Places Where Amazon Could Build Its New Headquarters Cities are jockeying to offer the best deal for Amazon, hoping to lure more jobs and infrastructure development.
By Seth Archer
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
In September, Amazon announced that it would invest $5 billion in developing its next headquarters and wanted cities to fight one another for a chance to host what would be called HQ2. And fight they have.
Cities have offered increasingly outlandish things to try to lure Amazon. Stonecrest, Ga., has offered to rename itself Amazon, while several Missouri cities said they would build a Hyperloop to connect several of the state's largest metro areas.
Whichever city the ecommerce giant chooses could see a huge impact on its job growth, tax income, infrastructure development, quality of life and more. It's why Newark, N.J., has offered $7 billion in tax incentives over the next 10 years to host HQ2.
The hunt for HQ2 has led many to speculate on which city would win. The New York Times, Moody's, CNN, CNBC and more have all published predictions. To make sense of it all, Sperling's BestPlaces, a website designed to help users find out where to live next, combined the predictions from 18 sources.
Sperling's averaged the rankings of all those predictions to come up with a meta-ranking of sorts. The average ranking of each of Sperling's top cities, along with notable sources that gave the city a top ranking, are listed in the slides that follow. Sperling's prediction for the final HQ2 destination is listed last.
It's worth noting that not all of the predictions that Sterling's studied were formatted the same. Some, like CNN Money's ranking, had more than one first-place finisher.
Uladzik Kryhin/ShutterstockSan Jose, Calif.
Average rank: 34.8
Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money
Data compiled by Sperling's
Akin Oyedele/Business InsiderToronto, Canada
Average rank: 34.5
Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money, GeekWire
Data compiled by Sperling's
Pittsburgh, Penn.
Average rank: 32.2
Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money, Venture Beat, New York Times Common Sense
Data compiled by Sperling's
Sean Pavone/ShutterstockRaleigh, N.C.
Average rank: 31.6
Notable first-place finishes: New York Times Opinion, Denver News Tribune
Data compiled by Sperling's
Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesNew York, N.Y.
Average rank: 29.3
Notable first-place finishes: CNBC, Anderson Economic Group
Data compiled by Sperling's
Denver, Colo.
Average rank: 28.3
Notable first-place finishes: New York Times Upshot
Data compiled by Sperling's
ShutterstockDallas, Texas
Average rank: 27.7
Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money, CityLab
Data compiled by Sperling's
GlassdoorAustin, Texas
Average rank: 26.6
Notable first-place finishes: Moody's, CNN Money, Venture Beat
Data compiled by Sperling's
Jonathan Ernst /ReutersWashington, D.C.
Average rank: 26.5
Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money
Data compiled by Sperling's
AP Photo/Matt RourkePhiladelphia, Penn.
Average rank: 25.8
Notable first-place finishes: Slate, CityLab
Data compiled by Sperling's
Thomson ReutersChicago, Ill.
Average rank: 21.7
Notable first-place finishes: Slate, CityLab
Data compiled by Sperling's
f11photo/ShutterstockBoston, Mass.
Average rank: 17.2
Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money
Data compiled by Sperling's
Atlanta, Ga.
Average rank: 13.6
Notable first-place finishes: New York Times Opinion, CNN Money
Data compiled by Sperling's
