Chula Vista Offers Amazon $400 Million in Incentives for Headquarters
Cities across America are lining up their bids to be the potential landing site of Amazon’s lucrative HQ2 proposal. In California, all of the major cities will be launching bids, from San Francisco and Oakland to Los Angeles and San Diego. However, some smaller California cities still think they’ve got a shot to piggyback off of their larger neighbors and pull off the upset of the century.
One of those cities is Chula Vista. Located at the midway point between San Diego and the U.S.-Mexican border, the 14th-largest city in California is throwing everything its got at Amazon in hopes that they won’t be able to say no when it comes to picking their second headquarters location. Per the Phoenix Business Journal, the city plans on offering Amazon a $400 million incentive and development package.
The proposal includes an 8-million-square-foot, “shovel-ready” site that could complete construction as soon as 2020. The proposal also includes the possibility for Amazon to work with the city to create the "world's first binational university,” with campuses in both the United States and Mexico.
Chula Vista’s offer is actually part of a larger redevelopment initiative that the city has on the books for the next 20 years regardless of whether or not Amazon chooses them. Their masterplan calls for the creation of 11 new neighborhoods that would house 60,000 new residents. The plan also calls for the creation of a large office park, retail space, and hotel.