The Secret Winners From Amazon's Second Headquarters Shortlist

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced on Thursday that it had officially narrowed the list of candidates for its second headquarters down to 20, eliminating the vast majority of the reported 238 applicants and brining the remaining cities one step closer to the 50,000 jobs promised by the e-commerce behemoth.

Not surprisingly, Amazon’s shortlist includes several locations in the Midwest and South and on the East Coast. The list shies away from tech-heavy West Coast hubs, but it does include one major Californian metropolitan area. Here’s a snapshot of the finalists’ locations:

(Credit: Amazon.com)

“Thank you to all 238 communities that submitted proposals. Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” said Holly Sullivan, Amazon’s head of economic development, in a press release. “Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.”

Amazon provided no further details on why each city was selected, other than to say it based its choices on the criteria announced at the beginning of the search, which included a metropolitan area of more than one million and an ability to attract top technical talent.

Company officials will now work more directly with finalist cites. Amazon is expected to select a winner later this year. It is unclear exactly how the next phase of this process will look for these local governments, but judging by the very public displays many put on during the application process, it should be entertaining at the least.

It will also be interesting to see whether local businesses step up their marketing efforts. The announcement of Amazon’s shortlist brings our attention to the “secret” winners of HQ2—potential partner corporations that will benefit from having Amazon as a neighbor without having to foot the bill for the company’s sure-to-be lavish demands.

One example would be Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) , an open-source software and enterprise IT company based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The company has a strategic partnership with Amazon’s Web Services unit and is rapidly growing its cloud offerings. Raleigh hits on several other key requirements, including its close proximity to top schools like Duke and UNC, but the presence of Red Hat is almost certainly a factor

Several other locations look attractive for strategic reasons. Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFM), the organic grocery chain Amazon shelled out $14 billion for last year, is headquartered in downtown Austin, Texas. Bringing HQ2 to Austin could mean that Amazon wants the new location to be the center of its budding grocery business.

We also know that Amazon has reportedly considered expanding into pharmacy operations. Well, Walgreens (NASDAQ:WBA) is based in Deerfield, Illinois—less than an hour outside of shortlist city Chicago. Rite Aid (NYSE:RAD) is headquartered about two hours away from Philadelphia, while CVS (NYSE:CVS) finds itself slightly over an hour’s drive from Boston.

There is no indication that Amazon is interested in working directly with any of these companies, let alone willing to move HQ2 to a nearby city in order to make that partnership work. And in today’s world, one would hardly need to be located near another business to join forces on a specific project.

But proximity still matters to some, and it will be interesting to see whether any of these brands open their arms to Amazon—or reject the company’s advances altogether.

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