The city of Dallas, Hunt Realty Investments and the parent company of The Dallas Morning News have put a site together in downtown Dallas for Amazon HQ2.

The 50-acre proposal includes the former site of Reunion Arena and wraps around the southwest end of downtown Dallas and sits above the Trinity River. It includes Union Station, where the DART train, the Trinity Railway Express to Fort Worth and the D-Link to Oak Cliff all meet.

The existing mass transit immediately fills one of the key metrics that Amazon listed on its specs when it unleashed a competition this month for its second headquarters among cities with populations of at least 1 million people in the U.S. and Canada.

Dallas-based Hunt and the city of Dallas each own a little over 20 acres.

-- The city owns the former site of Reunion Arena and an adjacent parking garage.

-- Hunt built and owns the Hyatt Regency, the landmark Reunion Tower site and property on either side of it. The company also leases Union Station from the city. The 100,000-square-foot historic building is "highly underutilized" and has potential to become a more important asset for the city, said Mike Wallace, senior vice president of Hunt Realty. DART would also get the boost in ridership from Amazon employees, and the site has the advantage of not waiting for DART to get there, said Todd Watson, senior vice president at Hunt Realty.

-- A. H. Belo Corporation owns about 8 acres, including The Dallas Morning News building, which is being offered to fill Amazon's initial requirement for a 500,000-square-foot building ready to occupy in 2019. The News, at 508 Young St., is 325,000 square feet, and the rest of the space could be easily found in surrounding buildings, Wallace said.

Hunt Realty Investments, the city of Dallas and A. H. Belo Corporation, the parent company of The Dallas Morning News, have put together a 50-acre site in downtown Dallas for Amazon HQ2. (HKS)

Last year, A. H. Belo said that it planned to move the newspaper from its home since 1949 to the old Dallas Central Library, which is being renovated. The company said that it was considering alternatives for the newspaper campus, which includes a parking garage and surface parking.

Katy Murray, A. H. Belo chief financial officer, said the company has agreed to have the campus included in the proposal that Hunt Realty submitted to the city, but she said the company has reserved the right to separately market the building.

"While we are happy to be included, we have reserved our rights to continue down our own path at looking at opportunities for the campus including our right to sell it if we want to at some point in the future," Murray said.

"Basically, we are participating," she said, "but have said we will not wait to see what happens" with Amazon's selection process if presented with other opportunities that make sense for the company.

Amazon said it will decide on its second headquarters in 2018. The company said it will invest $5 billion in Amazon HQ2, which it expects will employ as many as 50,000 over about 10 years.

"Dallas deserves strong consideration from Amazon leadership," said Chris W. Kleinert, chief executive officer of Hunt Consolidated Investments. "Dallas absolutely possesses all of the site and community requirements that have been established by Amazon."

Ray Hunt, executive chairman of Hunt Consolidated, has been active in downtown Dallas since the 1970s and 10 years ago built a new headquarters off Woodall Rodgers Freeway as Uptown was being developed.

"We've had a long-term view of Dallas, and we're patient," Kleinert said of Amazon's time frame for filling out its new headquarters.

Hunt Realty would be the developer on the project.

"So many big things are already happening in Dallas," Kleinert said. "Our site could be a catalyst for multiple sites to succeed as well as ours."

The Reunion site would be uplifting to Southside on Lamar, the Cedars and north to the West End, Trinity Groves and Victory Park as all the more services and amenities Amazon employees will need move into the area, said Todd Watson, senior vice president of Hunt Realty.

The Reunion site, Watson said, can fill Amazon's office space needs, which it has said will eventually be 8 million square feet, or as much as it has now in Seattle.

"There's really no site that's a bad site, and they're all great for Dallas," Watson said.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias