Amazon.com Inc.’s second headquarters was conceived in one world and born into another. The e-commerce and cloud computing giant executed on its commitments at Pentagon City’s Metropolitan Park, HQ2’s first phase, but those commitments were all made pre-pandemic. Everything has changed.
HQ2’s second phase, meanwhile, is a sprawling unimproved lot stuck in post-pandemic purgatory, between “on hold indefinitely” and “all indications of kicking that off next year,” as my Washington Business Journal colleagues and other outlets have reported since March.
That’s seven months of dancing around the inevitable. Assuming it advances and isn’t sold off to become a new arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, HQ2’s second phase must be condensed, blending the best of the original proposal with the reality that even if the second headquarters does eventually reach 25,000 employees, Amazon won’t need anywhere close to the density Arlington County approved for the site…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
