The insiders were correct: Amazon announced Tuesday that its new second headquarters will be split between a site in Queens and another in Crystal City, northern Virginia. Each will have about 25,000 employees. Nashville, meanwhile, will get an "operations center of excellence" with about 5,000 workers, reports the Wall Street Journal and WKRN. "We're talking about the single biggest economic development deal in the history of New York City," said a pleased Mayor Bill De Blasio. Less happy is congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist.
"Amazon is a billion-dollar company," she tweeted on Monday, per Politico. "The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here." Amazon's home base will continue to be in Seattle, but the Crystal City location gives the company and owner Jeff Bezos closer proximity to Capitol Hill. (Ocasio-Cortez has another worry: affording the steep rent prices in her soon-to-be new home of DC.)