Already instituting layoffs and other cutbacks, Amazon has decided to pause construction on a complex billed as the company's second headquarters in northern Virginia. Work had been scheduled to start in this quarter on the second, larger phase of the project; the company did not announce a new date, the Wall Street Journal reports. The first phase, with two office towers, is nearly done and will house employees starting in June; the second phase, originally supposed to have three 22-story office buildings and a futuristic, 350-foot glass building, is now up in the air, a local official said. In a competition with other regions, the Arlington area across the Potomac from Washington, DC, offered Amazon major incentives to build there, and the company in turn promised billions in investments and tens of thousands of jobs, per the Washington Post.
"Our second headquarters has always been a multiyear project, and we remain committed to Arlington, Virginia," an executive said in a statement. Amazon has announced more than 18,000 layoffs and trimmed expansion plans after the online retailer's early-pandemic boom faded. The company posted a loss last year. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants also have made large cuts to their workforce recently. They're reconsidering plans after an evolution during the pandemic from remote work to a hybrid schedule to a return to offices, a consultant said. "Amazon can have so many powerful ripple effects in the economy that when they make a big decision like this, we're going to take notes," Matt Patton told the Journal. (More Amazon stories.)
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