Frisco readying bids for six sites with ability to land Amazon's HQ2

Courtesy of HKS Inc.

The initial office building at Frisco Station is nearly completed. The group behind the 242-acre development has been marketing a 50-acre build-to-suit site.

The Tower at Frisco Station will be developed in the future along the Dallas North Tollway to the north of the Dallas Cowboys headquarters.

Jake Dean

The Star in Frisco - the corporate home for the Dallas Cowboys - could help bring Amazon to the city.

Submitted Rendering

Wade Park, a proposed mixed-use development, has sites earmarked for a big corporate campus.

Jake Dean

Longtime Dallas lawyer and land investor Don Godwin has about 390 acres on two of the hard corners of the Dallas North Tollway and U. S. 380 in Frisco.

Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney and other city officials are putting together a city bid for Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), with six potential development sites along the Dallas North Tollway. Show Full Story

The city is responding to a request-for-proposal issued by Seattle-based Amazon earlier this month for the e-commerce giant's second headquarters, which is expected to cost $5 billion to develop.

At build-out, Amazon's second headquarters could total upwards of 8 million square feet and the online retailer could need upwards of 100 acres to accommodate the campus.

"Amazon is a bold company and they think big," Cheney told the Dallas Business Journal."In our minds, they are looking for cities that think the same way they do, and Frisco has big thinkers. We are bold innovators, and from that perspective, we are a natural fit."

About 40 percent of Frisco is undeveloped, with billions of proposed real estate developments popping up along the Dallas North Tollway surrounding The Star in Frisco, a billion-dollar-plus development anchored by the Dallas Cowboys.

Cheney said the city has until this Friday to submit its selections to the Dallas Regional Chamber. Frisco is one of the North Texas cities vying for Amazon's second headquarters.

"We have a whole menu of options to offer the company from shovel-ready sites to green field to customize a campus," he said. "We are hungry for a corporate relocation of a Fortune 100 company and we've never seen as big of an opportunity as this one."

The six proposed development sites are located in the 10-mile stretch of the Tollway between the Sam Rayburn Tollway and U.S. 380. Cheney declined to immediately disclose the tracts.

Dallas-Fort Worth, as an entire region, has a good shot of making the short list for Amazon's HQ2, he said.

The central location in the United States with an international airport with direct flights throughout the world, as well as Texas' business-friendly climate, he said, makes it an excellent choice for the e-commerce giant.

And Frisco, from a city perspective, plans to be a stand-out player in the region, Cheney added.

"Amazon is known as being a frugal company and we understand that vision well by having one of the lowest tax rates in the region," Cheney said. "We have a history of being dealmakers and being able to move fast."

Dallas-based Woodbine also recently teamed up with The Estate of Bert Fields on a 2,800-acre tract to build a massive yet-to-be determined development. That kind of land could certainly handle Amazon.

The Dallas Regional Chamber plans to submit the region's proposals by Oct. 19. Amazon plans to make a decision next year.