(Courtesy of the Office of the Mayor)

Instead of one giant campus—some futuristic flagship with a living roof and whatever else companies with gobs of money dream up—the mayor of Washington, D.C. is proposing that Amazon spread its second headquarters over one of four D.C. neighborhoods: Anacostia Riverfront, NoMa-Union Station, Capitol Hill East, and Shaw-Howard University.

“These locations present an unparalleled opportunity for Amazon to create interconnected, transit-oriented, and sustainable campuses with access to riverfront and green spaces,” Bowser said in a statement.

The mayor announced in a video last month that the District would join the horserace of cities falling over themselves to answer Amazon’s call.

“Well, that makes sense—they have the west coast Washington, and the east coast Washington,” Bowser mused. Plus, “Jeff owns a house here already” (that would be Jeff Bezos’ $23 million museum-turned-private-residence in Kalorama).

That video remained pinned to the top of the mayor’s Twitter feed ever since. D.C. also immediately came out with its own Amazon-wooing hashtag (#obviouslyDC) and website (alexawhydc.com). The latter has now been filled in with more detail about what, exactly, Amazon’s second headquarters could look like here.

The company wants to be within 30 miles of a population center of at least one million people, near a major airport and with plenty of transportation options. So far, so good, but it is also looking to start with 500,000 square feet of space and eventually expand to up to 8 million square feet over the next decade.

Probably the only two sites in D.C. proper that would truly make sense for the company are off the table. Amazon can’t plunk its banana stand down on the site of RFK stadium because it is federal land under a lease that specifies it must be used for recreation. Poplar Point, meanwhile, needs to be remediated of contaminants and have facilities for the National Park Service and the U.S. Park Police moved before it could be used in such a fashion. So instead, District leaders have turned to a mix of public and private sites in four fast-growing neighborhoods.

When the New York Times ran down the list of viable cities for Amazon’s needs, it eventually winnowed the options down to two: Washington, D.C. and Denver. But it picked Denver for exactly this scenario: land in the District is expensive and hard to find (not to mention the nightmare of necessary zoning changes and all-but-certain NIMBY fights over multiple land parcels), and D.C.’s ‘burbs don’t quite fit with Amazon’s hip Seattleite image.

That isn’t stopping our neighbors in Maryland and Virginia from trying, though. Despite the limitations, many believe either D.C. or its environs still has a pretty good shot, given the region’s walkability, transit options, proximity to the federal government, strong universities, and Bezos’ ties to the region.

Bids are due on October 19, and the company is expected to make a decision within a few months.

HQ2 D.C. sites announcement by Rachel Sadon on Scribd