An Amazon spokesman said Mr. Grella was not involved in the headquarters search. The spokesman also said that the company had added more than 6,000 jobs this year in cities that applied for the headquarters but did not make the list of finalists, and that Amazon expected similar hiring in finalist cities that were not selected.

Officials from the finalist cities spent more than a year compiling thousands of pages of documents, producing slick videos and hosting Amazon officials for tours and dinners at some of their area’s best restaurants. Many proposals included billions of dollars in tax incentives. New Jersey offered $7 billion in tax breaks if Amazon chose Newark. Atlanta’s mayor said the city had offered more incentives to attract Amazon than it did for the Summer Olympics in 1996.

In a 218-page proposal, Boston pitched a recently closed thoroughbred racetrack as a site, as well as mass-transit extensions and an “Amazon task force” of city officials to act as the company’s contacts at City Hall.

The Columbus Dispatch obtained more than 1,300 pages of documents prepared for the Ohio city’s pitch, which detailed “everything from the size of sewer lines on sites it was pitching to detailed hate crime rates in the city.” Columbus also said Amazon would not have to pay property taxes for 15 years.

Toronto did not offer tax incentives but told Amazon that it would save billions of dollars because of Canada’s universal health care, lower cost of labor and lower overall taxes. And Denver pitched a site near its airport and more than $100 million in incentives.

New York’s most recognized landmarks even turned orange for Amazon for a night.

In recent years, the AOL founder Steve Case has toured the country promoting the “rise of the rest,” the idea that the tech boom will eventually spill out into smaller cities in the middle of the country. But in focusing on two coastal megacities, Amazon may have called that narrative into question.

“It actually is deflating that maybe in this environment, there isn’t a lot of opportunity for midsize cities,” said Amy Liu, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.