Boston critics say the Amazon HQ2 bidding process is reminiscent of the city’s quest to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. Fewer residents of Boston support the city getting Amazon HQ2 than any of the other jurisdictions still in the running, a new survey shows. Just 34% of Bostonians "strongly support" the city landing the $5B, 50,000-job second headquarters prize from the world's largest e-commerce company, a study conducted by Elon University and The Business Journals found. The figure is the lowest of the 16 U.S. metropolitan areas surveyed.
Boston also leads the nation in apathy over HQ2. Twenty-two percent of Beantown residents neither support nor oppose landing the economic development windfall, higher than the other most-apathetic cities of Los Angeles, at 21%, and New York City, at 20%, according to the poll. Elon surveyed 386 Boston residents in the online poll, and gave the Boston answers a 5.3 credibility rating, the online poll equivalent of the margin for error.
Atlanta was the city with the broadest support for HQ2, with more than 60% of residents surveyed expressing a strong desire to see the project, which calls for 8M SF of office development over the next decade, locate in the Peach State. Amazon narrowed its list of prospect cities from the more than 200 proposals to a shortlist of 20 in January. Three of those locations — Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland — are in one metropolitan area, and New York City and Newark, New Jersey, counted as one metropolitan area for Elon's poll.
