- Amazon.Com, Inc AMZN is halting construction on its second headquarters near Washington.
- John Schoettler, Amazon’s real estate chief, confirmed the pause in a statement to Bloomberg News.
- Schoettler said the company remains committed to Arlington, Virginia, where Amazon has committed to spend $2.5 billion and hire 25,000 workers by 2030.
- Also Read: Amazon Initiates Layoff Affecting 18K Employees: Report
- But the construction moratorium will delay the online retailer’s arrival at its most significant real estate project.
- The move coincides with the company’s deepest-ever job cuts and a reassessment of office needs to account for remote work.
- The first phase of the campus, which the company calls HQ2, is nearing completion.
- Amazon, which has more than 8,000 workers in the area, expects to start moving those employees to two newly completed office towers in a 2.1-million-square-foot development called Metropolitan Park, near the Pentagon and Washington National Airport, in June.
- The delay affects a more significant phase across the street. It calls for three 22-story office towers and the 350-foot-tall (107-meter) Helix, a corporate conference center and indoor garden designed to echo the Spheres, plant-filled orbs at the heart of the company’s Seattle headquarters. Arlington officials granted the 2.8-million-square-foot project, PenPlace, its most crucial approval in April.
- Amazon proliferated during the pandemic but has reassessed real estate projects to reflect remote work.
- Meanwhile, construction projects in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, and Nashville, Tennessee, were paused while Amazon teams redesigned buildings.
- Price Action: AMZN shares traded higher by 2.07% at $94.04 on the last check Friday.
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