As of press time, Raleigh was still in the running for Amazon’s second headquarters in North America. Local economic developers say the potential impacts could ripple into the Cape Fear region if Raleigh makes it to the top of the list.
 
In January, Amazon named the city as one of 20 cities across the United States – and the only one in North Carolina – being eyed for building the tech giant’s second headquarters. The company is expected to make a decision sometime this year.
 
Already with a headquarters in Seattle, the company’s selection to build a full equivalent to its current facility is anticipated to bring $5 billion in construction spending and as many as 50,000 jobs in the city it chooses.
 
In addition, construction and operation of the headquarters are expected to “to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community,” according to Amazon’s webpage about the headquarters search.
 
“Right now, you can only roughly estimate what potential economic impacts might be,” said Steve Yost, president of North Carolina’s Southeast Regional Economic Development Partnership. “We certainly hope that it locates in the Triangle and in North Carolina, because I think it will have some strong impacts on the rest of us.”
 
Distribution and other such hubs could be a part of those ripple effects. And since Amazon is sourcing from all over the world, there’s the potential it could bring business to the Port of Wilmington, Yost said.
 
“If Amazon had their second headquarters in the Triangle area, having an Amazon distribution center in the metro areas of the state gets a lot more viable,” Yost said. “Amazon has 43 percent of online buying activity – that’s huge. So I would imagine there would be some potential impact with the port.”
 
With Raleigh just two hours away, impacts would also take place in the area’s tourism and hospitality industry, bringing many of the company’s workers to the coast, he said.
 
“When you are recruiting a company in North Carolina, its proximity to the coast and proximity to the mountains – not every state has that combination of quality of life in its geography – it’s sold all the time by economic developers regardless of where they are in the state,” Yost said.
 
The movement of people could also take place the other way, luring some of the region’s workforce to Raleigh for job opportunities and higher-paying wages, he said.
 
“People would relocate and possibly some people out of the Wilmington area,” Yost said. “I could envision graduating students coming out of UNCW could work at that facility … The really big impact is on the employment footprint that it would create.”
 
Other Wilmington-area impacts could be on the local business scene and its interactions with Amazon, he said.
 
“Amazon is very forward looking on technology research and development particularly in cloud computing, and I’m sure they’ll partner with other entities to do some of that,” Yost said. “Wilmington is sort of developing a high-tech focus, and so I hope there could be some interplay with that.”