City of Raleigh offered Amazon up to $46M in tax incentives for HQ2 project

RALEIGH – The city of Raleigh was prepared to offer Amazon up to $46 million in tax incentives if the company chose a site in the city for its HQ2 project, according to documents the city released Wednesday afternoon.

The company could qualify for that amount, according to a letter from Jennifer Bosser, the city’s business retention and expansion manager, to Chris Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

To qualify for the city incentive, Amazon would have to create 61,875 jobs and invest $6 billion for a total of 10 million square feet.

The $46 million would be on top of the more than $2 billion in incentives the state was prepared to offer.

More covereage: What the state offered

The city built its proposal around what it called the “Prime Corridor,” a loosely defined crescent reaching from Dorothea Dix Park to roughly St. Albans Drive in Midtown.

The state documents previously released revealed that the Triangle site Amazon was most interested in was the “Parks and Partners” site between Dix Park and NC State University’s Centennial Campus.

The city proposal said most of the land it was suggesting for Amazon was owned either by the city itself, at nine acres, and Kane Realty Corp. at 11 acres.

John Kane told WRAL TechWire about the Prime Corridor in January, shortly after Raleigh was named as one of 20 finalists in the competition to land HQ2.

Amazon ultimately decided to split the project in half, dividing it between Virginia and New York.