Amazon has received another three years to get started on the next phase of its Crystal City headquarters.
The Arlington County Board granted a three-year extension to plans to develop the PenPlace site at a meeting earlier this month.
Amazon’s new deadline to act on the current site plan, which envisions a futuristic spiral structure towering over the intersection of S. Eads Street and 12th Street S., is June 30, 2028.
An Amazon representative told ARLnow that the company has ample space at its current Metropolitan Park location, but continues to look at PenPlace as a long-term investment.
Last week, the company announced in a memo to employees that it expects to shrink its corporate workforce in response to ongoing advances in AI.
“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote.
Amazon did not respond to a question about whether HQ2 will be shedding jobs.
The headquarters’ webpage still anticipates building out to a total of 25,000 new jobs, but in an application for Virginia taxpayer subsidies earlier this year, Amazon said it had only “moderate” confidence in meeting that goal.
Prior reports to the commonwealth had listed a “high” level of confidence in meeting job goals, according to The Washington Post.
The County Board originally approved plans for PenPlace back in April 2022, but they have faced setbacks with no clear timeline on when construction will begin.
In May 2023, Libby Garvey, the chair of the County Board at the time, said she believed the delay would be “just a year.”
Amazon completed utility work at PenPlace in December. The site has gone relatively quiet since then, though Amazon sought permission in February to replace the property’s chain-link fence with a wooden panel fence.
