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Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#111

Post by cbdumas »

phaedryx wrote: post #49
cbdumas wrote: post #30

If Amazon hadn't turned this whole "HQ2" thing into a national drama they could have built a huge presence there without riling up so much backlash. Hopefully this ridiculous stunt is a lesson to them.

Unfortunately, I think they learned that cities will bend over backwards for them and offer up tons of free data and tax incentives.

Honestly I think they had only a very few locations in mind when starting this "search" anyway, but wanted to frame it as this big, open-ended, national competition in order to wring the highest dollar amount out of their favorite spots. They were never going to take the risk of attracting workers to Tulsa, Detroit, or {insert other city in Middle America} over an existing large pool of talent in an attractive metropolitan area.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#113

Post by bacondude3 »

lovecg wrote: post #4
hello_friendos wrote: post #2

Good, Amazon shouldn't be getting any subsidies just for having their offices in a city.

Even if the city gets back much more in tax revenue?

Even then, no. If a city wants businesses there, they should make it easier for everybody, not just big companies like Amazon.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#114

Post by frosted-flakes »

sjroot wrote: post #12

Is there a press release or any statement from Amazon about this? Paywalled here (and would prefer a direct source anyway).

You can get past the paywall by playing with the stop/refresh buttons so the page never fully loads. Or just use outline.com.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#115

Post by dralley »

jdhn wrote: post #27
lovecg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the city gets back much more in tax revenue?

You're getting downvoted, but it's true. If I recall, the city/state would've broken even not that far into the future, and then everything after that would've been pure profit for them.

It's a matter of principle. NYC (or any municipality) shouldn't be bending over for massive multinationals. It's a form of corruption, one that's depressingly widespread, and it's a race to the bottom that, from a 30,000 foot view, accomplishes nothing but screwing over the taxpayers and smaller competitors lacking the leverage for these antics, and benefiting the corporations that are already enormous and powerful.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#116

Post by asnyder »

barry-cotter wrote: post #73
forkandwait wrote: post #14

Of all the places, why did NYC offer Amazon subsidies? NYC actually has too many good jobs for the amount of space... I am also proud of my cantankerous fellow New Yorkers who fought this.

Stupid as the subsidies were your attitude is vile. We have a technology for increasing housing, they’re called apartments. New York does not lack space, it lacks enough housing. If this kind of crap goes on New York will get as bad as California where every municipality wants to build offices and nowhere wants to build housing. This delight in pulling up the ladder after you and making it harder for people to get jo…

What are you talking about? In my area of downtown Brooklyn there's a glut of luxury residential towers recently completed or still going up. As far as I know there's so much supply now that prices are actually decreasing, but again this is a decrease on luxury apartments so whether it's $4400 a month for a two bedroom, or $4000 a month, that's not very helpful to most people. What we need are new non-luxury buildings where normal middle-income earners can afford to live (ex. $2000 for a 2 bedroom). Amazon would've just led to the filling of luxury towers in LIC and encourage developers to build even more luxury towers for the new Amazon transplants.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#117

Post by pastor_elm »

walrus01 wrote: post #95
akhilcacharya wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubling their office there still pales in comparison to the headcount projected for LIC. 7K max vs. 25k targeted for Amazon. Amazon already has a presence in NYC.

Worth noting that Google owns all of 111 8th in NYC. They're slowly not renewing leases for existing tenants and taking over the whole building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue 111 8th is a major internet traffic exchange point. It's also gargantuan, it's 2.9 million square feet and occupies a whole city block. One of the interesting things about 111 8th is that it was designed for much higher than no…

I imagine they're getting decent bang for their buck when hiring in NYC. Really the COL adjusted wages in NYC are some of the lowest for all American tech cities.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#118

Post by legitster »

jandrese wrote: post #79
legitster wrote: post #59

A bit disappointed. The narrative really turned on Amazon during this process. But I feel like every organization shops around for deals - Amazon was the first company to do it transparently and openly tell cities what they have or are missing. There was a real opportunity to bring tech industry to heartland cities. In the end all they proved was this kind of stuff should just stay in the backroom. And good paying te…

I would't feel too bad for Amazon. They are the ones that made it a big spectacle and dragged it out for far longer than necessary or wise.

I don't necessarily feel bad for Amazon - I guess I just hate how disappointing the result was. Transparency lost.

They likely could have avoided it if they had just selected one of the dark horses like Indianapolis or Saint Louis.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#119

Post by djsumdog »

skh wrote: post #71
endofcapital wrote: post #46

The big tech giants seem to be A/B testing different ways of opposing and working with the government. Sooner or later these tests are going to start showing they have more power than the government, and they will start ignoring laws because they are irrelevant to increasing whatever metric is important this quarter. This may have already happened, it's really hard to say.

My current pet idea is that the Electoral College ought to be replaced with the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. That way we could do away with the facade that presidential elections currently create.

There 2014 Princeton study that showed only the top 10% of income earners political opinions are reflected in the political leanings of the elected representatives in the US. I did a short video on this: https://youtu.be/sD8KtaNzI8o

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#120

Post by stevietopsiders »

annexrichmond wrote: post #45

> We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada. So this whole HQ2 thing ended up being a grand waste of everybody's time.

Big slap in the face to the other cities filing bids. They also made attractive offers, but Amazon wasn't interested in them, just in wringing tax breaks out of NYC.
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