Amazon just revealed the top cities for HQ2 — here are the ones throwing hundreds of millions to land it

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff BezosMike Segar/Reuters

• Amazon just revealed the top contenders that could land its second headquarters.
• Nine of these cities are offering major economic incentives as part of their bids. Three have said they will not give Amazon any tax breaks.
• Out of all of these cities, Newark, New Jersey is proposing the largest incentive package valued at $7 billion.

---

On Thursday, Amazon named 20 North American cities as the top contenders for the future home of the company’s second headquarters, dubbed HQ2. The company says HQ2 will bring 50,000 jobs, and late last year launched an open call for city proposals that explain why the e-commerce giant should invest $5 billion in building a campus there.

In addition to offering huge swaths of land, financial incentives have become key parts of bids from many of these metros. A few incentive packages offer tax breaks that total in the billions.

Amazon likely won’t pick a city unless it is offering some kind of economic deal, since that was one requirement the company laid out in its request. When Amazon has opened facilities or office spaces in other cities across the US, it has often accepted local subsidies.

From 2005 to 2014, the company received at least $613 million in local government subsidies to build warehouses, according to a 2016 reportby the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. The group, which pushes for local resources to be dedicated to community development, also found that Amazon received an additional $147 million in subsidies for its data centers.

It’s not unusual for large companies to receive government subsidies in return for pledging to increase jobs and economic prosperity in the region (though that doesn’t always happen).

Here are the nine places that have made their HQ2 incentive packages public, in ascending order of monetary value.