Amazon is seemingly just renaming Crystal City

Amazon has officially announced its second global headquarters will be split between New York City and ... some part of Virginia it's calling "National Landing."

As reports projected, the company revealed Tuesday that it'll route 25,000 new jobs to its "HQ2" in New York's Long Island City neighborhood, and another 25,000 to Arlington, Virginia. Except Amazon's official announcement says its Washington-area headquarters will be in National Landing — a place Amazon seems to have pulled out of thin air.

Save for Amazon's announcement, a quick search of The Washington Post reveals no previous references to this mystery area. So, reasonably, Twitter lit up with locals questioning just what a National Landing entails. Luckily, Amazon included a handy map to explain where this so-called National Landing office will, well, land.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Yes, "Amazon in Arlington" will be just west of Reagan National Airport, in the D.C. metro area currently known as Crystal City. Plenty of people think the area's glimmering name is a bit of misnomer anyway, which could be why Virginia is officially okay with Amazon co-opting three whole neighborhoods. In a Tuesday statement, Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia called National Landing "a newly branded neighborhood encompassing Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yard." In a similar vein, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) released a Tuesday video rehashing the state's only noteworthy slogan as "Virginia is for Amazon Lovers."

Amazon also unveiled its plans for a 5,000-employee Operations Center of Excellence on Tuesday. This office is slated for Nashville's neighborhood of The Gulch, which is surprisingly not the made-up name in this situation.