Amazon announced a list of 20 cities Thursday in contention for its second headquarters, and Portland didn't make the cut.

Only one West Coast city, Los Angeles, made the shortlist. Amazon is focused primarily on large cities on the East Coast, from Boston to Miami.

Other possibilities include Toronto, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis and Nashville. Amazon says it plans to spend more than $5 billion in whatever city it chooses and hire up to 50,000 people.

"Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation," Amazon said in a statement Thursday. It gave no indication as to how it narrowed its list of contenders, but reiterated that it expects to make a decision this year.

Altogether, 238 cities bid for Amazon's campus and Portland was always an extreme longshot given its proximity to the company's current headquarters in Seattle. Portland's bid was very low key, proposing no special measures or incentives to lure the company.

Amazon's 20-city shortlist.

However, Amazon does have a substantial outpost in downtown Portland, employing around 400. And the company said last week that it will expand to a second office for that subsidiary, AWS Elemental. That could double the number of employees it has in the city and make it among Portland's largest tech employers.

The Top 20

Here are Amazon's 20 finalists:

Boston, New York, Newark, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Montgomery County (Maryland), Washington D.C., Raleigh, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Miami, Toronto, Columbus (Ohio), Indianapolis, Chicago, Denver, Nashville, Los Angeles, Dallas and Austin.

By narrowing its list to 20, Amazon will ratchet up the pressure on those cities to offer lucrative tax breaks or subsidies to win the investment.

Apple, following Amazon's lead, said Wednesday it will build a second campus somewhere in the U.S. for a large customer service center.

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699