Upper Marlboro, MD – Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker, III released this statement following news that online retail giant Amazon will be creating a second headquarters for its company and requesting local jurisdictions to bid through a competitive process to be the potential home of a $5 billion project that will be home to 50,000 new jobs.

“Today, I directed my economic development team to begin the process of analyzing and locating potential sites in Prince George’s County that could ultimately become Amazon’s second headquarters in North America.

Over the past six years, Prince George’s County has successfully attracted nearly $10 billion in economic development including the $1.4 billion dollar MGM National Harbor Resort, the new Regional Medical Center in Largo, the Purple Line, as well as having two sites as finalists for a new consolidated FBI Headquarters. All of this economic development activity has resulted in us leading the State of Maryland in job creation over the last three reporting quarters.

According to Amazon’s desired requisites for this competition, they are looking for a location that can attract high tech workers as well as have a headquarters that can be served by mass transit and in proximity to a major city. It is clear that the entire National Capital Region as well as the State of Maryland is very competitive in this regards. In addition to Prince George’s County having great sites with enough space and land at our Metro stations, we are home to institutions of higher learning such as the University of Maryland and Bowie State University. We also have a highly educated and diverse workforce that will help Amazon, grow and prosper.

Moving forward, the Prince George’s County’s economic development team will work with our state and municipal partners, as well as our business community to analyze all potential locations that will make us competitive during this bid process. Similar to the process we used to select a location for our Regional Medical Center and the FBI Headquarters sites, we will find the best locations to propose to Amazon and will aggressively make the best pitch for their new headquarters to be located in the County.

Companies like 2U and Kaiser Permanente realize that Prince George’s County is the place to be. We are “Primed” and ready to bring a company like Amazon to the National Capital Region and I am very excited about this opportunity.”

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