Could Langford become the future headquarters of Amazon? City’s mayor sure thinks so

WATCH: Langford is throwing its name in the ring to become home to Amazon’s $5 billion second headquarters. April Lawrence reports.

Langford’s mayor is a man with a big plan.

Stewart Young wants to bring multi-billion dollar online retailer Amazon to the West Shore.

“It’s not as far-fetched as everybody may think,” Young said.

Amazon announced this week it’s looking for a location for its second headquarters. It would be a $5 billion dollar campus with 50,000 full-time employees.

Since the announcement, more than 100 cities across North America have thrown their names in, including Canadian cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

Young says members of the business community approached him about making a bid.

“If we can get them in the door and at least get them to come here and talk to us and hey we’ll showcase the area and see how much better it looks than Waterloo, Ontario with five months of snow,” Young said.

What Langford lacks in some of Amazon’s requirements, like having a population of a million people and rapid transit, Young says it makes up for elsewhere.

“They’re saying we have to have all the approvals in place in three years, well I’m already zoned, I can actually give them a building permit in 48 hours so we have something that we can do a little bit better probably than some of these other places,” he said.

Young also points to the low Canadian dollar, housing affordability on the West Shore, good universities, and Amazon-style culture.

“Three lakes within half a kilometre of the location, you can’t get much better than that,” Young said.

Bids for the headquarters have to be in by Oct. 19.

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