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BLOOMBERG
Amazon.com Inc is pausing construction on its sprawling second headquarters near Washington, a decision that coincides with the company’s deepest ever job cuts and a reassessment of office needs to account for remote work.
John Schoettler, Amazon’s real estate chief, confirmed the pause in a statement to Bloomberg News. Schoettler said the company remains committed to Arlington, Virginia, where by 2030 Amazon has committed to spend $2.5 billion and hire some 25,000 workers.
But the construction moratorium will delay the online retailer’s full arrival at its biggest real estate project, and could create headaches for local developers, as well as construction and service workers banking on Amazon’s rapid expansion.
The first phase of the campus that the company calls HQ2 is nearing completion and will be finished and occupied as planned. Amazon, which says it now has more than 8,000 workers in the area, expects to start moving those employees to two newly completed office towers in a 2.1-million-square-foot development called Metropolitan Park, near the Pentagon and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in June.
The delay affects a larger phase across the street. It calls for three, 22-story office towers and the 350-foot-tall (107-meter) Helix, a corporate conference center and indoor garden designed to echo the Spheres, plant-filled orbs at the heart of the company’s Seattle headquarters. Arlington officials granted the 2.8-million-square-foot project, called PenPlace, its most important approval in April.
Amazon and its developers had at one point considered starting to dig the foundations and underground parking garage of that block immediately following the vote, according to a person familiar with the plans, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. The company says it had targeted the first months of 2023 for a formal groundbreaking.
That is now paused, and Schoettler didn’t specify a new start date.
“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees,†he said.
Amazon in 2017 announced plans for a second headquarters that would ultimately house 50,000 employees, prompting cities around North America to bid ferociously for the project.