Amazon unveils 20 potential cities for a second headquarters. Are any in Kentucky?

Amazon’s second headquarters won’t be in Kentucky. The announcement came Thursday, when the Seattle-based online retail company said it had narrowed its choices to 20 potential sites, down from 238. None of the finalists were in Kentucky.

Amazon broadcast its intention to build a second headquarters in September 2017, and cities across North America that met the criteria started submitting bids.

Louisville, the only known Kentucky city that had submitted a bid, didn’t make the list. Cincinnati, which includes seven Kentucky counties in its metro area, also failed to make the list of finalists.

Lexington, Kentucky’s second-largest city, didn’t meet Amazon’s criteria threshold for a metropolitan area that had more than 1 million people.

Of the 20 cities that did make the final cut, the closest to Lexington are Nashville, Indianapolis and Columbus. A full list of the cities can be found here.

Amazon is expected to announce the winning bid later this year. The company has previously stated that the second headquarters will hire as many as 50,000 full-time employees, with an average annual total compensation surpassing $100,000.

The second headquarters is expected to cost more than $5 billion in construction and will be a “complete” headquarters and not a satellite office.

Amazon already has a established presence in Kentucky, with warehouses in Lexington, Campbellsville, Louisville, Shepherdsville and Hebron.

A $1.5 billion Amazon air hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport received preliminary approval for $40 million in Kentucky tax incentives last year, and the company recently bought more than 200 acres of land for the air hub, according to a senior Amazon official.

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 11:05 AM with the headline "Amazon unveils 20 potential cities for a second headquarters. Are any in Kentucky?."