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- Amazon decided not to build its $5 billion HQ2 headquarters in Philadelphia.
- Incoming CEO Jeff Bassy jokingly cited his Giants loyalty as a reason the company should avoid Philadelphia.
- Philadelphia is home to the Giants' rival, the Eagles.
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Amazon's incoming CEO opposed building the company's second headquarters in Philadelphia, a new book reveals – and he jokingly suggested it was because of his loyalty to the New York Giants.
Andy Jassy, who will replace Jeff Bezos as Amazon's CEO in the third quarter of 2021, was a key figure in deciding the location for the company's proposed $5 billion HQ2 project in 2018. That's according to the book "Amazon Unbound," which came out last week. The book, written by Brad Stone, chronicles Amazon's growth over the last two decades.
Amazon ultimately settled on splitting HQ2 between Long Island City, Queens, and Arlington, Virginia. But the project was driven out of New York City following protests by residents and local politicians, leaving Arlington as the sole HQ2 host.
-World Architecture (@WACommunity) February 4, 2021
In Stone's book, one passage describes comments Jassy made during the HQ2 decision process, when he was head of Amazon Web Services. At the time, Philadelphia was a top-three finalist for the project, alongside Chicago, Illinois, and Raleigh, North Carolina. But Jassy gave a joking criticism of the city in a meeting.
"Andy Jassy, according to one person's recollection, opined that he disliked the city, which was a bitter rival of his favorite football team, the New York Giants, and suggested that he and his employees would never want to live there," the book says. "Jassy was apparently joking but some members of the HQ2 team, coming off months of detailed, quantitative work, later expressed exasperation that the process was now exposed to the arbitrary personal preferences of senior executives."
Jassy attended Scarsdale High School in Westchester County, New York. He also expressed his fandom for the Giants in an interview with Eric Engleman of Puget Sound Business Journal in 2009.
"I grew up in New York and my dad, who's really a sports freak, had season tickets to the Rangers and Giants, so I went to those games very regularly as a kid," Jassy said.
Pennsylvania was reportedly willing to offer Amazon a $1 billion tax incentive package to build HQ2 there, since the company's presence would have brought an estimated 50,000 jobs to the city, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Philly officials even launched an interactive website with videos and maps to highlight the city's talent, infrastructure , and livability as part of the proposal to Amazon.
Amazon removed Philadelphia as a candidate from its list of finalists after the February meeting. Then in June, it came up with five revised locations: Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California; New York, New York; Northern Virginia; and Nashville, Tennessee.