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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

#251

Post by magduf »

ggggtez wrote: post #220
magduf wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly-paid professionals need service people, so bringing more of them into your city creates more demand for other careers to support them. If there isn't enough affordable housing for those lower-paid people, that's a failure by the local politicians. Don't blame the highly-paid professionals; they're not the ones controlling zoning and development.

I think most people on this thread are in agreement. It's not the tech people who are "to blame", it's the companies and politicians for not developing a sustainable growth strategy that includes housing for all the jobs that support those tech workers. Suddenly bringing in 25k high paid workers without a concrete plan on how to support that growth (including not giving gigantic tax breaks which would impact the nece…

There's nothing "sudden", however. These housing problems in major metro areas have been going on for a long time, and there hasn't been any action at all to rectify it. No one's building good, affordable housing at a proper density anywhere, as far as I can tell.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#252

Post by mc32 »

digianarchist wrote: post #169
zelias wrote: post #55

If Amazon had just quietly announced plans to expand to LIC without the "HQ2 Search" dog and pony show they almost certainly would still be here. Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision

>Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. Unless it's for a football stadium.

This is true, but sadly it’s democratic and lots of fans turn out in support. I don’t get it, but that’s probably because I’m not a pro sports fan.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#253

Post by elfakyn »

magduf wrote: post #196
kokokokoko wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very different because a large amount of NYC residents rent as opposed to own. To a resident that rents in NYC, Amazon moving in means they will have higher rents and less money on their pocket. It ends up costing many NYC residents actual money in rent to host Amazon, regardless of the subsidy. I think this one is a special case.

I don't see the problem here at all. If you have higher rents, that's because there's more demand for housing, and not enough affordable new housing is being constructed. Who controls that? Your local politicians. Who controls them? The voters who elected them, which is you if you live there. So you have no one to blame but yourself, and no cause to complain. You have the government you deserve.

That is a very shortsighted blame-the-victim mentality. You're conflating the power of the individual voter with that of the entire voting bloc. Besides, even if new affordable housing was constructed (which is getting harder and harder in nyc as people are being pushed further and further out geographically), it's not easy to just up and move, even in nyc.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#254

Post by fallingfrog »

What needs to happen now is that we need to use the Commerce Clause to make it illegal for a company to cut this type of deal with a city or state in the first place. It just creates a race to the bottom where cities have no choice to subsidize corporate bottom lines with taxpayer money or else have businesses leave.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#255

Post by CydeWeys »

refurb wrote: post #178
CydeWeys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because then it's a race to the bottom and all other companies start expecting these same deals (or even better), and eventually you do end up with a situation where the city does not get back more in tax revenue. It's simple negotiation; you may lose some money on that one deal, but you'll gain more in the end by not decreasing the value of all subsequent deals.

If a city signs up for a money losing deal, that’s on them. They should have negotiated better.

I mean, clearly we haven't signed up for the money-losing deal, as the deal has been canceled because of opposition and no give-aways will ever be made to Amazon.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#256

Post by drugme »

Erik816 wrote: post #201
drugme wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As shame. As an employee of a Big N company in NYC, this would have provided upward pressure on my salary. The fact that that's all you can think about ... is exactly why people are starting to lose their love for Big Tech in general.

Yes that's all the poster can think about. If you refuse to read the next sentence.

I read it also but on balance he did say, after all -- "A shame".

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#257

Post by joshuamorton »

jhall1468 wrote: post #173
zelias wrote: post #55

If Amazon had just quietly announced plans to expand to LIC without the "HQ2 Search" dog and pony show they almost certainly would still be here. Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision

Google doubled their occupancy to 7k. Amazon was promising 25k jobs. I'm stunned out how so many people in this thread are pretending thats equivalent.

You've got something confused here. Google's current occupancy in NYC is >7K. They were/are planning to more than double that to ~20K.

So it's absolutely an expansion of a similar scope.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#258

Post by magduf »

johndill wrote: post #153

good riddance. This was a bad deal for NYC. 2-3 billion in corporate welfare to the richest man in the world who heads a company that made 10 billion in profits and paid ZERO federal income tax. Against all odds I suspect NYC will survive. Now that Cuomo has an extra 2 billion or so in his pocket maybe he can fix the transit systems that are the lifeblood of the City.

>Now that Cuomo has an extra 2 billion or so in his pocket maybe he can fix the transit systems that are the lifeblood of the City.

You actually think that's going to happen?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#259

Post by cagenut »

Alex3917 wrote: post #58
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

Google didn't need any dog and pony show or significant forms of corporate welfare (that we know of) to announce a doubling of their presence in New York. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google-...

Google's expansion doesn't require its employees to live in a part of the city that lacks adequate schools and parks. Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford.

hundreds of thousands of people commute from new jersey across the hudson every day

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#260

Post by hguant »

bilbo0s wrote: post #162
specialp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The 25k number was just to make a splash and notice they aren't doing that again. Because there aren't really any other areas that could give them 25k skilled employees. They will scale up in Nashville which is expected since it is a growing area, and they will still be in NY due to the talent. The "HQ2" show was primarily to extract large concessions which almost worked. My initial reaction as a NY'er was "…

I don't even think they're really gonna scale up in Nashville. At least not in any meaningful way. 10 years from now, both Amazon and Google will have right around 25 thousand workers each in NYC. The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money. EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 yea…

Living in the DC-NOVA area, Amazon coming here seemed rather inevitable. There's a confluence of infrastructure, cheap office/datacenter space, and a stealthily growing engineering talent pool that Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon and the general smorgasbord of government contractors have built up over the years.

Additionally,it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon has seen the obscene amounts of money Microsoft is making pitching cloud security and general technical support to the government, and wants in on it.

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