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Amazon cancels plans to build New York headquarters

Chomsky

Chomsky

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New York (CNN Business)Amazon is ditching its plans to build a new headquarters in New York after facing backlash from members of the community.

"After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens," Jodi Seth, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Amazon selected New York City and Northern Virginia in November to split duty as its second headquarters (nicknamed HQ2) after a year-long search. Each city was expected to have more than 25,000 workers over time.
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Source: (CNN Business) Amazon cancels plans to build New York headquarters

What a fiasco! But despite NYC's loss, there's good news here:

"Perhaps your city may now get the new HQ!" :thumbs:
 
SenorXm/Sirius said:
No surprise really. I doubt Amazon expected the kind of backlash they got, but the reality is NYC doesn't need Amazon's HQ there.
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You may be right. Though I'm of the opinion that you can't have too many economic engines in your backyard.
 
Bucky said:
I guess New York doesn't want jobs?

I sounds like Tennessee will reap the rewards.
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If they go South, I'm thinking maybe Atlanta, which would really be a shot-in-the-arm for them. Atlanta's no longer that little out-of-the-way city, it used to be.
 
Chomsky said:
You may be right. Though I'm of the opinion that you can't have too many economic engines in your backyard.
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NY is trying to jettison their biggest individual economic engines.
 
If Amazon wants to still go with another HQ2, I'd put my money on Boston.

But they may not even bother now. Just stick with Virginia...
 
Chomsky said:
You may be right. Though I'm of the opinion that you can't have too many economic engines in your backyard.
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Backyard yes.. If Amazon was willing to do upstate, even just a little upstate, then yeah.. But right in NYC? Not going to work..
 
Bucky said:
I guess New York doesn't want jobs?

I sounds like Tennessee will reap the rewards.
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There will be another company or companies along in 10 minutes to set up shop and provide those jobs in NYC.
 
Phys251 said:
Seems like New York feels that giving the farm away was too much.
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Yeah. It would be stupid to hand over $1.5B in overall incentives just to get $3.75B in annual direct economic return in salaries and some other indirect economic benefit from the investment and expenditure related to those salaries. Damned corporations have no business influencing local economics for the benefit of the general public. Only government should be allowed to to influence local economies.
 
SenorXm/Sirius said:
Backyard yes.. If Amazon was willing to do upstate, even just a little upstate, then yeah.. But right in NYC? Not going to work..
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Yeah, but you've got remember this was an HQ - not a transport or warehouse facility. I think a city location would be ideal, in terms of the availability of the pool of professionals needed for staffing. How many software jocks & marketing gurus live in Lake Placid?
 
OrphanSlug said:
I am not surprised at all, the moment New York was selected political battle lines were drawn.

Way too each for Amazon to go elsewhere without so much resistance, and with probably a better incentive deal anyway.
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As long as they can pick a place that can draw the talent they need ...
 
zimmer said:
NY is trying to jettison their biggest individual economic engines.
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Let's call it for what it is Zimmer. We are seeing an anti-Wealth movement building in our country. These people want to destory our capital system.
 
Carjosse said:
There will be another company or companies along in 10 minutes to set up shop and provide those jobs in NYC.
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70% of New Yorkers wanted Amazon. New York is being led by the tyranny of the minority. This is an attack on wealth and prosperity.
 
Lutherf said:
Yeah. It would be stupid to hand over $1.5B in overall incentives just to get $3.75B in annual direct economic return in salaries and some other indirect economic benefit from the investment and expenditure related to those salaries. Damned corporations have no business influencing local economics for the benefit of the general public. Only government should be allowed to to influence local economies.
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:roll:
 
Chomsky said:
Source: (CNN Business) Amazon cancels plans to build New York headquarters

What a fiasco! But despite NYC's loss, there's good news here:

"Perhaps your city may now get the new HQ!" :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Watching virtually every other city across the country and beyond cast aside all dignity in a race to the bottom to supplicate itself before Amazon in ever more outrageous ways, begging Bezos for his business was easily among some of the most pathetic and jarring displays I've seen in years; worse still was how most of the press ended up fawning over these stories, like there was absolutely nothing wrong with any of this.

Guess we're in for round two.
 
jmotivator said:
Well, from what I am hearing it sounds like they are moving most of those positions to the new Crystal City, VA location.
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That would make sense, if the can fit them.

"Dueling HQs" is an interesting concept, though. It's often (enough) done in R & D and research environments. It forms a creative competition. No idea how that works in corporate headquarters though. For all I know, it might be a disaster.
 
SenorXm/Sirius said:
No surprise really. I doubt Amazon expected the kind of backlash they got, but the reality is NYC doesn't need Amazon's HQ there.
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Depends on the perspective I suppose. If you're an advocate for high paying jobs then the new HQ made sense, but the backlash was from locals who were afraid of more gentrification; that ship has sailed though. LIC has changed dramatically from when I worked there in the early 90s. It's prime real estate and this HQ would have certainly led to more development in areas that are still relatively affordable. Really the only thing the locals did was prevent the inevitable in terms of gentrification. The other part of the backlash was the millions in tax breaks to a company like Amazon; not unusual of course, but when you have companies like Google expanding on their own dime in NYC it made it a tougher pill to swallow. I bought our condo in NJ with the plan to sell it once the expansion peaks in our area. I don't think that will be too long in the distant future since the waterfront is being developed at a really fast rate with million dollar properties. Our town is busy improving parks and the business area in anticipation.
 
Surrealistik said:
Watching virtually every other city across the country and beyond cast aside all dignity in a race to the bottom to supplicate itself before Amazon in ever more outrageous ways, begging Bezos for his business was easily among some of the most pathetic and jarring displays I've seen in years; worse still was how most of the press ended up fawning over these stories, like there was absolutely nothing wrong with any of this.

Guess we're in for round two.
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You know, I do see your point here because I felt some of that - too. But for smaller cities and regional economies, how do you not want to land an economic engine like an Amazon HQ? The injection of tax income and the ripple effect of the jobs would be tremendous!
 
Chomsky said:
You know, I do see your point here because I felt some of that - too. But for smaller cities and regional economies, how do you not want to land an economic engine like an Amazon HQ? The injection of tax income and the ripple effect of the jobs would be tremendous!
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I think a lot of my concern has to do with bad precedent with respect to degradation of rule of law through an undermining of standardization and consistency, nevermind that the proposed/nominal economic benefits may not cover the incentives, give aways and write offs... In the future, is every city in the country going to be participating in bidding wars for one corporate facility or another, seeing how many tax exemptions, land and regulatory giveaways, compromises, and other special exemptions they're willing to make in order to get that business? Seems like this can only end poorly in the long run.
 
Tech hubs can destroy affordable housing in a region.
 
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