Amazon HQ2 To Be Split Between New York, Virginia: Report

Amazon may be dividing its time on the East Coast between the Empire State and the Old Dominion.

Rather than picking one location on the opposite coast for its proposed second headquarters, the Seattle-based tech giant is finalizing plans to move into the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, as well as the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., near Washington, D.C., according to a report by the New York Times.

Amazon will employee 50,000 between the two locations. The company already has more employees in both Long Island City and the Arlington area than anywhere outside of Seattle or San Francisco, the report published Wednesday said, which cited two sources that were briefed on the discussions.

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Amazon did not return CRN's request for comment on its office location decision prior to publication. However, both New York City and Northern Virginia made Amazon's list of 20 finalist locations for its second home back in January. Amazon started out with 238 possible locations.

Amazon, for its part, has said it would require 500,000 square feet of space by 2019, with 8 million square feet in the long-term, in which to build a $5 billion facility that could create up to 50,000 high-paying jobs.

Amazon executives reportedly met with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in Manhattan two weeks ago, as well as separately meeting with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The sources familiar with the matter said that New York has offered upwards of "hundreds of millions" of dollars in subsidies.

On Monday, Cuomo joked to reporters that he would change his name to "Amazon Cuomo" if that's what it would take to land the so-called HQ2 in New York.

"Anything else I can think of that'll get us over the top … Because it would be a great economic boost," Cuomo said.

The Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia, has both reliable public transit and close proximity to Washington, D.C., which has helped the location stand out as a possible second HQ. Amazon is still hotly pursuing the multi-billion JEDI government cloud contract, along with several big-name competitors, such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard.

Industry pundits believe choosing two locations for an East Coast HQ could help take the heat off the chosen cities when it comes to burdensome housing costs and traffic issues.

Amazon in January said it expects to make a final decision on a second home by the end of this year.