Mayor Sly James 'hasn't shed a tear' over Kansas City not making Amazon HQ2 cut

Kansas City Mayor Sly James says he is unconcerned that the city did not make the cut in Amazon's second headquarters selection process.

"I haven't shed a tear since we did not make the list," James said this month at the SXSW festival, according to CNN. "It wasn't something I was worried about one way or another."

James was part of a panel discussion with Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, whose city is on Amazon's list of 20 finalists announced in January.

Amazon announced in September it intends to create a second, $5 billion headquarters that would create as many as 50,000 jobs.

Kansas City was among 230 cities in North America that submitted applications. James' gimmick was to give five-star reviews of 1,000 random items on the Amazon website, extolling Kansas City in each one.

But James agreed with others that Kansas City learned a lot from the application process, which involved more than 200 people from across the region.

"It allowed us to talk about our city in a way that we hadn't been talking about on a consistent basis," he said at SXSW.

This story was originally published March 26, 2018 at 10:41 AM with the headline "Mayor Sly James 'hasn't shed a tear' over Kansas City not making Amazon HQ2 cut."