‘City of Amazon’ idea mushrooming

Stonecrest resident says she’s ready to be an “Amazonite”

Susan Lee, a resident of Stonecrest, has become part of a growing movement to embrace Mayor Jason Lary’s idea to carve out a portion of the City of Stonecrest and name it Amazon, Georgia as a way to lure the giant to set up its second world headquarters here.

When Lary pitched the idea a few days ago, news outlets from around the country carried the story.

Lee told the City Council during public comments today that she’s ready to be an Amazonite. She said it was her research on the word, Amazon, that convinced her.

“When I first heard of a possible name change (from) Stonecrest to Amazon, the name change didn’t fit too well on my tongue. Not intended as a compliment in my teen years, my siblings called me ‘Amazon woman’…I come from a family of vertically-challenged siblings,” Lee explained.

Lee told the council, however, that after doing research, she learned that Amazon referred to a legendary race of female warriors, the Amazon River was the biggest in the world and Amazon creator Jeff Bezos had set out to establish the biggest company in the world—all changed her mind.

“Good morning, fellow Amazonites,” Lee said, drawing applause from the council and audience.

Lary said he is excited about the idea of Amazon, Georgia.

“We’ve been getting national attention. It would have taken us another 10 years to get to this point,” said Lary. “The bid has been turned into the Georgia Economic Development Department, which is supposed to turn in a collective bid with all of the names and cities they’ve selected for Georgia to Amazon by Oct. 19. We are excited that our city is a viable player.  If you want to see some gauge of that, just pick up the AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). They ran a list on Sunday of all of the cities considered good for Amazon and we made the list.”