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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

#701

Post by [deleted] »

magduf wrote: post #657
kokokokoko wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real data we have shows that incomes of the people who live in an area has more correlation with the cost of rent than the demand. Amazon will bring in workers that will earn higher salary than the average NYC resident. The only way prices could go down would be if developers made a huge error across the industry and oversupplied housing. What you are suggesting is impossible, unless the government steps in and s…

They don't need to build housing directly; local government controls zoning and development, so all they have to do is insist that higher-density and more affordable housing be built than what is currently happening. They don't do that. SanFran is a better example of this really, but other places in the US have the same problem to some degree. This isn't "pie in the sky internet ideology"; other countries don't seem…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#702

Post by apendleton »

observer12 wrote: post #656
apendleton wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has, but is almost undoubtedly slowing as Seattle becomes more expensive and housing becomes more scarce (in other words, as it becomes New York-like). Massive inbound migration was possible because pre-Amazon, housing in Seattle was comparatively plentiful and cheap.

Seattle has a housing crisis because it has large amounts of the city with extremely restrictive residential zoning and refuses to compromise. They have large areas where multi-tenancy housing can't exists. Additionally, in the US everyone believes housing is not a depreciating asset. There is a reason Tokyo is the largest city in the world while being significantly cheaper to live in then similar cities.

Of course. This is true of New York as well, especially outside of Manhattan. I, too, would prefer a regulatory environment that allows for denser construction. None of that changes the fact that the regulatory environment is what it is, and as a practical matter it limits the extent to which people are able to move to either city to work for Amazon.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#703

Post by seppin »

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

Amazon still plans to dramatically expand it's workforce in NY/NJ.

Im not sure what the point of any of this was.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#704

Post by nerdb4itwascool »

untog wrote: post #189
nerdb4itwascool wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed. the drive to squash this deal was mainly driven from local politicians who were whining that they were cut out of the process.

As an NYC resident I'm glad my elected officials are "butt hurt" at not being involved in a political process that would affect the city in a large way. If they weren't "butt hurt" they really shouldn't be in their jobs.

I am also an NYC resident and followed this story closely. There was an immediate, knee-jerk reaction from local politicians when the announcement was made, often in the form of protests with plenty of photo ops. It was not about how to work with Amazon and the community to create something that works for everyone. Instead, their message was "WE DON'T WANT THIS, GET OUT NOW!"

At the end of the day, this city needs to curb its reliance on finance jobs. Adding 25k tech workers would be a major step forward to making NY more of a tech hub than it is today. Kicking out Amazon sends a message to other large companies who are thinking about NYC -- buyer beware.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#705

Post by tytso »

koheripbal wrote: post #488
tytso wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposition is not because some high tech firm, whether it is Google or Amazon, is expanding in NYC. The opposition is because of the Massive tax breaks and other $$$ giveaways New York was going to hand over to Amazon. I don't recall Google extorting NYC for $$$ before they decided to expand....

A "tax break" is just a reduction in taxes that otherwise wouldn't be paid at all . It still means a profit for the city. It's not like NYC is paying Amazon to come to NYC. NYC would still make huge tax revenues from additional sales, real estate, income taxes, and corporate taxes. Now they're turning that all away. It's such an irrational decision that if I were Amazon, it would raise a big red flag for me as well.…

Google is expanding to create 25,000 GOOD JOBS! But since it didn't extort $$$ out of politicians, the politicians can't as easily take advantage of it.

If you can get high-tech companies who are willing massively expand to create lots of GOOD JOBS without have to short $3 billion from the state budget, that might mean that the $3 billion dollars was a total waste and boondoogle....

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#706

Post by bduerst »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #500
bduerst wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ For anyone doubting this, Planet Money did an excellent podcast on how this phenomenon played out in Kansas City with corporations like Applebee's, and cost the city millions: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/11/16/668769284/epis...

You could easily argue it put Kansas City on the map. Kansas City is at least a well known name in the tech world now, when there's plenty of other midwest cities of similar size that rarely get brought up. Millions would be a steal for the revenue becoming a tech hub would bring in. Even if it does take a more than a decade to be realized.

How did giving Applebee's a tax discount put KC on the map for tech?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#707

Post by JDiculous »

nerdb4itwascool wrote: post #183
untog wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clarification: NYC didn't offer Amazon subsidies. New York State did. That's really the core of the tension - the whole deal was negotiated in secret then announced to the world as a finished product. That tends not to earn you goodwill with city politicians you deliberately excluded from the process.

agreed. the drive to squash this deal was mainly driven from local politicians who were whining that they were cut out of the process.

Why should NYCers not be pissed off that other people are making decisions on their city for them?

Why is NYC governed by Albany? Seems like it would explain a lot of the failings of NYC (eg. failing subway).

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#708

Post by smsm42 »

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

From what I heard, Google also doesn't get the kind of deals with tax breaks that Amazon did. Amazon wanted to leverage their added value (which is clearly existing) into some benefits. That did not work in this case, but it wasn't at all obvious it won't. Majority of New Yorkers supported the deal, as it was.

Also, "nobody bats an eye" is not right either - there are tons of protests against Google, which has been widely reported. They just didn't have a focus point like Amazon did, but if any city had a wide contingent of young socialist politicians caring about PR much more than for the jobs for the city population - the same could happen to Google too.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#709

Post by addicted »

khill wrote: post #441
digianarchist wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, the NY football teams play in a New Jersey swamp so that didn't really work out for NYC either.

Other than the fact that stadiums are known to cost cities a lot of money without returns and NYC gets to avoid those costs and benefit from the branding.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#710

Post by lsllc »

cletus wrote: post #573
lsllc wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, a $3m brownstone in Park Slope I saw had ~$700/month in property taxes" Surely that's a typo. At a tax rate of $10 per $1000, that would to be $2500/month.

Examples: - Park Slope brownstone, $548/month: https://streeteasy.com/sale/1375411 - Park Slope condo, $1740/month: https://streeteasy.com/building/105-8-avenue-brooklyn/3 Note: if you look into this a lot of condos have deceptively low monthly taxes due to a tax scheme (now defunct) called J-51 (IIRC) where property taxes started at 0 and would go to normal levels over 20-30 years.

That's absolutely insane. So we get oligarchs and tyrants buying up property in NYC to launder their ill gotten gains and paying little to no property tax on it!
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