Skip to main content
Amazon's search for a second headquarters has led U.S. cities to issue desperate pleas. The company announced a call for proposals last September for a project called HQ2, and over 200 cities, including Portland, applied.
Some cities went to humiliating lengths to win Jeff Bezos over.
Stonecrest, Ga. voted to change its name to Amazon, Ga. the mayor of Kansas City, Mo. wrote 1,000 Amazon product reviews to prove his five-star-giving enthusiasm. And the city of Tucson shipped a 21-foot tall cactus to Seattle. (Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, by contrast, quietly visited Amazon headquarters, and the city submitted "one very fat document" making its case.)
Today, the USA Today first reported, a list of the top 20 wining cities was announced. Portland didn't make the cut. And people aren't that upset about it.
"YES!!!!!! PORTLAND IS OFF AMAZON'S HQ2!" one Twitter user, Scott Jones, wrote.
"I'm thrilled that Portland isn't on the Amazon HQ2 list. This city is falling apart as is," wrote another.
Those people that are cheering Amazon's snub are probably looking at Seattle, the city that got the first headquarters in 2010, as a cautionary tale of what happens when the tech giant runs a town.
Amazon boasts having funneled $38 billion into the economy of its flagship city, but many residents point to its presence as the source of many of the city's problems.
As an influx of young, rich tech workers began infiltrating once culturally-rich neighborhoods—like the queer-centric Capitol Hill—they snuffed out community and affordability.
"Once our center of gay, musical, biker, bohemian, leftist, and anything-else culture," one 2015 Gawker article said, "it now bears as little resemblance to its glory days as modern San Francisco does to the utopia of Hunter S. Thompson."
"Amazon—conqueror of cities, seller of lots of stuff—has left an indelible mark on Seattle," another Boston Globe article remarked. Adding that the company's "mark" included worsening the housing crunch, over-crowding transit systems and roadways and ultimately changing the DNA of the city.
In fact, The Seattle Times all but celebrated Amazon expanding elsewhere, declaring it a release valve for the city's ballooning housing costs.
"This is probably welcome news for the housing market in Seattle, both on the for-sale side and the rental side," Svenja Gudell, chief economist for Seattle-based Zillow, told the Times. "Not to say that Amazon is a full driver to those (housing price) increases, but they're certainly contributing."
It's no surprise that many Portlanders want nothing to do with it.
Lucky for us, it looks like Amazon is moving away from the west coast. It's picks for potential headquarter homes are: Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Columbus, Indianapolis, Nashville, Montgomery County, Newark, Northern Virginia, New York City, Raleigh, Toronto, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C.
Here's a sample of Portland Twitter's reaction to Amazon's HQ announcement:
