Before the ground-breaking for Amazon’s 2.1-million-sq-ft Metropolitan Park office development across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, Clark Construction Group’s John Swagart and Jeff King walked door to door, introducing themselves to shopkeepers near the MetPark site. The good-will ambassadors were pounding the pavement to inform MetPark’s neighbors of the plan to dig a 50-ft-deep hole—710 ft x 310 ft—and create two 22-story buildings.
The intros were a small part of Amazon’s community relations campaign. The Seattle-based e-commerce, cloud-computing and retail giant began implementing its good neighbor policies even before 2018, when it selected two Crystal City, Va., sites in Arlington County for Amazon HQ2—its $2.5-billion second headquarters that includes MetPark, and the planned 2.8-million-sq-ft PenPlace. HQ2 is by far the largest development in the National Landing Business Improvement District—a public-private BID that focuses on Crystal City and nearby Pentagon City and Potomac Yard.