WASHINGTON — Amazon’s new headquarters will be split between New York’s Long Island City and somewhere called ‘National Landing’ in Northern Virginia.
There’s only one problem — at first, nobody seemed to know where in the world National Landing, described by Amazon as an “urban community”, actually is — and the announcement sent newsrooms and confused residents alike scrambling to figure out exactly what part of Arlington would host the tech behemoth’s second headquarters-to-be.
WTOP dove into maps and news releases, and here’s what we’ve pieced together:
- National Landing in described here as “the newly defined interconnected and walkable neighborhood that encompasses Crystal City, the eastern portion of Pentagon City and the northern portion of Potomac Yard.”
- A rather vague map included in Amazon’s online announcement dropped a pin smack in the middle of Crystal City — except apparently rebranded as “National Landing.”
- A statement from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s office helped narrow down the future campus a little further, stating:
The headquarters will be housed in a collection of new and renovated buildings located in National Landing, which includes portions of Pentagon City and Crystal City in Arlington County, Virginia and Potomac Yard in the City of Alexandria, Virginia.
- Gov. Northam’s office said the new headquarter’s initial growth would be “focused in the Crystal City and Pentagon City portions of National Landing,” meaning it could expand further down the road.
- Artwork released by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership appeared to show one of Amazon’s prospective developments in Pentagon City. Some sleuthing in Google Maps appears to show that campus roughly centered in present-day Metropolitan Park, just west of Route 1 and across the street from the Costco in Arlington.
In a tweet, Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz tried to explain the “National Landing” moniker as “a way to avoid saying, ‘Parts of Arlington, parts of Alexandria.'”
“It’s still Crystal City; it’s still Pentagon City.”