Sternlicht Says Boston Has Good Shot at Landing Amazon for HQ2

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire real estate investor Barry Sternlicht has some advice for Amazon.com Inc.: Take a good look at Boston for your second North American headquarters.

Amazon is sorting through the 238 proposals it has received for the $5 billion project known as HQ2. Boston has “a pretty good shot” at landing the company because of its technology, infrastructure and educational base -- “just the zeitgeist of the city,” Sternlicht said in an interview on Bloomberg Television from the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Southeast locales such as Atlanta and North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham area are also among places the tech giant could go, he said.

Amazon, which is promising as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs with the new headquarters, creates “so much demand, and cities are so excited to have them,” Sternlicht said.

--With assistance from Erik Schatzker

To contact the reporter on this story: Christine Maurus in New York at cmaurus@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net.

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