Toyota went to Plano.
State Farm Insurance landed 10,000 jobs in Richardson.
And the financial giant Charles Schwab is still building its new regional office campus in Westlake.
But when Amazon shopped North Texas for its HQ2 site, it wasn’t interested in the burbs.
Downtown was where the digital retailing giant considered putting thousands of workers.
Sites in the southwest corner of downtown, in the Cedars neighborhood and just across the river in north Oak Cliff and West Dallas all caught Amazon’s eye.
Amazon eventually picked sites in northern Virginia and New York for its 50,000 workers, and Nashville got the 5,000-job consolation prize. But developers say that downtown Dallas was next in line, and that it will reap the benefits for years to come.
Builders and economic development officials say that the fact that downtown Dallas was in serious contention for the country’s biggest office deal ever will help attract more jobs to the center city.
“We have already seen results of more people looking at the downtown area because of the exercise,” said John Crawford, vice chairman of the economic development group Downtown Dallas Inc. “We will continue to add major companies to downtown because of the exposure we got.
Central Commercial Group 