DFW One of 20 Finalists for Amazon's Second Headquarters

Amazon announced Thursday morning that it has trimmed the list of 238 communities that applied to host its second North American headquarters to 20. North Texas' regional bid made the cut. So did Austin's, but two other Texas cities, Houston and El Paso, did not.

"Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough — all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” Holly Sullivan, Amazon's head of economic development said Thursday. “Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.”

According to the company, Amazon will invest more than $5 billion and bring more than 50,000 jobs to the metropolitan area selected for its new site, which the company says will be a complete headquarters, not a satellite office.

Last year, as Amazon sought bids for HQ2, as the new headquarters has become known, it said it wanted a metropolitan area with a population of more than 1 million, access to public transit and space for 8 million square feet of development. In October, Dallas submitted a joint bid, organized by the Dallas Regional Chamber and Fort Worth Chamber with several other North Texas cities, touting the diversity of DFW itself and the sites Amazon could choose within it.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings celebrated Amazon's decision on Twitter on Thursday but said the cities involved in the regional chambers' bid still had a lot of work to do.

Thrilled to be in the next round of @amazon HQ2 process. There’s much work left to be done but I want to thank my fellow mayors, @DRChamber, @FTWChamber and all our citizens for making @CityOfDallas and DFW such a desirable place to be!

— Mike Rawlings (@Mike_Rawlings) January 18, 2018

DFW and Austin are joined by several of the largest and quickest-growing U.S. cities on the list of finalists, including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, the only West Coast hub to make the list. Despite bids from several Mexican cities, Toronto is the only non-American finalist.

Here's the complete list of finalists:

• Atlanta
  
• Austin
  
• Boston
  
• Chicago
  
• Columbus, Ohio
  
• Dallas
  
• Denver
  
• Indianapolis
  
• Los Angeles
  
• Miami
  
• Montgomery County, Maryland
  
• Nashville, Tennessee
  
• Newark, New Jersey
  
• New York City
  
• Northern Virginia
  
• Philadelphia
  
• Pittsburgh
  
• Raleigh, North Carolina
  
• Toronto
  
• Washington, D.C.