Arlington offered $23M for Amazon HQ2. Thanks to the pandemic, it hasn’t had to
Nearly four years after winning that sweepstakes, Arlington County has yet to pay Amazon a single penny. And that’s by design.
The coronavirus pandemic shrank some of the tax revenue streams that executives and elected officials said would grow as the e-retailer built its offices in this affluent Northern Virginia suburb. That has meant no cash grants paid out to Amazon — at least not yet — for its $2.5 billion capital investment in the county. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Ahead of a reporting deadline this week, Arlington officials confirmed Wednesday that they did not pay any direct financial incentives to the company for the third year in a row.
The county had initially projected it would pay $22.7 million in total to Amazon in annual payments through 2035. These pay-as-you-go grants are based on Amazon’s commitment to occupy a certain amount of office space in Pentagon City and Crystal City and on an expected increase in local hotel stays stemming from the company’s activity.
“Largely because of the pandemic, that expected growth hasn’t happened, and so that means the incentives aren’t happening either,” County Board Chair Katie Cristol (D) said.
If the news may suggest less of an economic windfall for the county than officials and executives had touted just a few years ago, the company and its boosters say it’s too soon to make any snap judgments.
“Since we announced Arlington as the site for HQ2 nearly four years ago, we’ve made strong progress on our hiring and development plans, and are only just beginning to see the economic and community benefits of our investments,” Holly Sullivan, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide economic development, said in a statement.
Pandemic or not, the company’s economic impact on Arlington is impossible to ignore: Besides occupying 1 million square feet of office space, the company has hired more than 5,00o employees, putting it one-fifth of the way toward its stated goal of bringing at least 25,000 new jobs to Northern Virginia.
The arrival has created thousands of construction jobs, brought in new retailers and development projects in the neighborhood, and boosted the county’s status as a hub for large tech companies. Since Amazon’s announcement, the defense and aerospace heavyweights Raytheon and Boeing have announced they would be relocating their headquarters to Arlington.
Sullivan also noted that Amazon has invested more than $800 million in…
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