Last August, the Tip Sheet reported that Washington, D.C. was the odds-on favorite for Amazon HQ2. Well, we were half right. Last week, Amazon announced that it will split its new headquarters – and the anticipated 50,000 new high-paying jobs – between the D.C. suburbs and Queens in New York City. Amazon received billions of dollars in incentives and concessions from the winning cities that are expected to be recouped through increased tax revenues and other means. The company has also promised to invest $5 billion over the next 15-17 years. The decision to split the HQ and open a third 5000-employee operations center in Nashville was presented as a way to avoid overwhelming any one area while maintaining access to top talent. Despite the split, the winning cities will now have to grapple with the real challenges of accommodatingย the headquarters’ massive office space and housing needs. Residents of the proposed HQ sites are worried that they will be displaced as Amazon transforms their neighborhoods physically and demographically. There is also a general consensus among analysts that the purpose of the HQ2 “beauty pageant” was to collect highly valuable economic development data from the participating cities.