Buffalo-Rochester metro corridor official response regarding Amazon HQ2 selection process
On Thursday morning, Invest Buffalo Niagara and Greater Rochester Enterprise were notified the Buffalo-Rochester metro corridor has not been selected to advance in Amazon's second North American headquarters (HQ2) site location review.
"While this news is certainly disappointing, we're proud of the comprehensive proposal we put forth on behalf of Buffalo and Rochester," said Greater Rochester Enterprise President and CEO Matt Hurlbutt and Invest Buffalo Niagara President and CEO Tom Kucharski. "The joint collaboration between Buffalo and Rochester has been an inventive exercise in big picture, regional thinking focused on the attraction of new capital investment and jobs in Western New York. By linking efforts, the combined Buffalo-Rochester metro corridor offered a sophisticated, robust and compelling proposal that showcased the talents of our 2.2 million people and our extremely livable communities.
"Our region boasts a number of key differentiators, including well-documented affordability, low operating costs, ease of travel - via bicycle, public transit or automobile - extensive access to leisure/lifestyle activities, dynamic development site locations, an existing and evolving innovation ecosystem, 60-plus colleges and universities, and a central location within the internationally significant U.S./Canada community. We also offer a highly skilled talent pipeline, strong regional competency in radio-frequency identification (RFID), sustainable packaging, flight controls, drone technology, high-performance computing, software development and data analytics, to ensure that companies located here remain competitive within the global economy.
"Overall, this joint effort yielded much information regarding how our two communities can work together to promote our region to future suitors and top-tier talent throughout the world. And our organizations will continue to work toward attracting new companies to our region that are similar to many of those who already selected upstate New York as their place to do business, including: Athenex, Cloudcheckr, Datto, ON Semiconductor, Sentient Science and Trove Predictive Data Analytics.
"Thank you again to the many community and regional stakeholders who contributed to the compilation of our RFP response. We look positively ahead to the prospect of pursuing additional opportunities on behalf of the region."
About Invest Buffalo Niagara
Invest Buffalo Niagara is the area's leading private sector economic development and business attraction organization, focused on research, marketing and business development outreach. InBN's staff provides comprehensive services and project management for companies looking to expand or relocate. From research all the way through ribbon cutting, InBN is the primary point of contact for economic development in the eight-county Buffalo Niagara Region. Learn more at
buffaloniagara.org.
About Greater Rochester Enterprise
Greater Rochester Enterprise is an economic development organization committed to attracting new capital investments, creating regional wealth and new jobs throughout the Greater Rochester Region. Learn more at
rochesterbiz.com.
