“Calgary still has a lot to look forward to”: Our city falls short on Amazon’s list for HQ2
Posted Jan 18, 2018 11:51 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary will not be the new home of Amazon’s second company headquarters.
The retail giant shortened its list to the top 20 cities Thursday and Toronto is the only Canadian city that made the cut.
Calgary submitted a bid in October exclaiming, “We’d fight a bear for you”. Unfortunately, that promise wasn’t enough, nor was the $500,000 spent on the campaign.
Spokesperson with Calgary Economic Development, Mary Moran, said there were some areas our city was lacking.
“We don’t have senior tech talent here that is ready for the digitization or the new economy and we don’t have a large number of grads coming out of computer science programs because it hasn’t been a focus for us.”
Moran added Calgary’s location on the map also had an impact.
“Our observations have been that they didn’t select a lot of western cities, a lot of concentration in the east. They definitely did not indicate that in the RFP, but I would just say geography obviously played a bigger part then we thought,” she said.
She explained they do not regret the creative campaign because it has helped gain the attention of other companies.
“Calgary still has a lot to look forward to. We’re looking at the Olympics, we have lots of leads, we hope to attract 97 companies this year. There is a future, but we have to make sure we have all the right ingredients working to the best of our ability to secure these companies.”
The company plans to invest $5-billion in the new headquarters, and place as many as 50,000 high paying jobs in the building.
Amazon narrowed its list from 238 proposals; it’s expected to announce the winner later this year.
Here is the complete list of candidates:
– Atlanta, GA
– Austin, TX
– Boston, MA
– Chicago, IL
– Columbus, OH
– Dallas, TX
– Denver, CO
– Indianapolis, IN
– Los Angeles, CA
– Miami, FL
– Montgomery County, MD
– Nashville, TN
– Newark, NJ
– New York City, NY
– Northern Virginia, VA
– Philadelphia, PA
– Pittsburgh, PA
– Raleigh, NC
