Updated: Two Cities Emerge as Front Runners for Amazon's HQ2

[Updated Nov. 5, 2018]

The New York Times is reporting that Amazon has decided to split HQ2 into two locations in Long Island City, in New York City, and Crystal City, in Arlington County, Virginia.

"The company is nearing a deal to move to the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. Amazon is also close to a deal to move to the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb, one of the people said. Amazon already has more employees in those two areas than anywhere else outside of Seattle, its home base, and the Bay Area," report Karen Weise and J. David Goodman.

Laura Stevens, Scott Calvert, and Tawnell D. Hobbs had the big scoop of the weekend [paywall]: "Amazon.com Inc. has progressed to late-stage talks on its planned second headquarters with a small handful of communities including northern Virginia’s Crystal City, Dallas and New York City, people familiar with the matter said…"

Reporting leaked information, the trio of reporters provide some of the first details to emerge on Amazon's process for selecting the location of its second headquarters since it announced 20 finalists at the beginning of 2018.

In another article that might be easier to access than the paywalled Wall Street Journal article, Jon Fingas reveals more details about the current status of talks in the three cities involved in late-stage talks, as well as some of the hopeful contenders that didn't make the news, like Atlanta, Denver, and Toronto.

Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, is still promising to make a final decision by the end of the year.

There was more breaking news today, as Laura Stevens reports [paywall] that "Amazon.com Inc. plans to split its second headquarters evenly between two locations rather than picking one city for HQ2." An article by Sara Salinas follows up on that breaking news without the obstacle of a paywall. The day concluded with the final details about Amazon working to finalize a deal for locations in both Long Island City and Crystal City.