Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#761

Post by bobthepanda »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #281
bobthepanda wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another fare and another point of failure in what is probably already a long commute? Sounds unappealing. LIC will never become a second Midtown because its transport connections are so poor.

> because its transport connections are so poor. In what sense? I used to work in LIC and it was pretty easy to get to. Lots of lines go though Queensboro Plaza.

It has good subway connections to Queens and Manhattan, and that's about it. There's no good LIC LIRR station (the existing one is not located on the line to Penn). Good luck if you're coming from Westchester, New Jersey, Staten Island, or the Bronx, because that's going to be a hell of a commute.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#762

Post by lenocinor »

apendleton wrote: post #702
observer12 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least NYC has New Jersey next door, the densest state in the union: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-densely-populated-u... But I hope NYC will still work to fix this problem.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#763

Post by ceejayoz »

sct202 wrote: post #753
ceejayoz wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at page 7 of the RFP: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything... A good portion of all of that is stuff Amazon could compile, but they got cities across the country to donate probably tens of thousands of hours of taxpayer salaries to do it instead. The nature of special incentives each proposal offered - custom ones for Amazon-only, or unusual ones - will also have told them which cities th…

Non-standardized data from hundreds of different cities is probably more trouble than it's worth in aggregate.

It's probably quite a bit easier for Amazon to standardize in this form than having to do the initial legwork themselves.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#764

Post by ianstallings »

sotojuan wrote: post #451
ianstallings wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth. I took a lower paying job in the midwest, and I can now save a lot more money, while also living a less stressful life. NYC is a really cool city and I enjoyed living there. But I "did my time". I think more and more tech workers are going to wake up to the fact that while mega-city life can be cool, it's not the only way to live.

I’m not sure why tech workers think they’re special. Almost everyone that moves to NYC for a good office job goes through this. Moving to a suburb or another city after age 35 is a stereotype. So is staying here and enjoying a DINK or single life (unless you have a lot of money!). Job-wise, the NYC tech market is as good as ever.

This may shock you but we have cities out here. I live in one and walk to work. Not the suburbs. That being said, what is your overall point?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#766

Post by munk-a »

tytso wrote: post #450
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

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....

Eh, sadly I think if Amazon had shut up about the process and just silently negotiated for tax breaks this probably would have gone through without issue. These sorts of stupid tax breaks get offered to large companies all the time and it's always a race to the bottom (and, with our broken campaign finance laws and legality of post-service employment, often times deals that are just clear losses get passed so some politician can get a sweet 5mil/year when they retire onto that same company's board of directors)

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#767

Post by Anarcissie »

ilovetux wrote: post #747
JCharante wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animal cruelty is a great analogy because the people who oppose it, which are the minority, are more vocal than those who are proponents of it, which make up the majority.

Who are proponents of animal cruelty besides dog/cock fighting fans/operators? I doubt that these groups form a majority.

If they know how most food animals are treated, which seems likely, then most people who eat meat are OK with severe, sometimes grotesque cruelty. It goes beyond opinion: they put their money down for it.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#768

Post by Androider »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #646
rhegart wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of the incentives are from Amazon’s taxes. 27B in economic activity for 3B in tax breaks for just 10 years is wayyy better than almost every other corporate deal. Better than Tesla for sure. That 3B will no longer be generated. You want a net 24B or a net 0B? New Yorkers chose 0

Except it isn’t 0. It’s far from 0! LIC’s growth is really impressive without Amazon.

The waterfront is slowly getting nicer, but as soon as you go even a few blocks inwards it's still sketchy and/or industrial. An anchor like Amazon HQ would have had a ripple effect of improving the whole area (like maybe we could finally get a decent grocery store? It's cheaper to take the train into Manhattan and go to Whole Foods than visiting the local LIC Food Cellar and Key Food markets!), especially the more eastern neighborhoods within walking distance, which really aren't seeing much of any development today.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#769

Post by kingkawn »

Try to bulldoze your way through community politics in NYC and get your ass handed back to you, every time.

The only person who successfully circumvented NYC politics was Mike Bloomberg, and that was solely a result of his personal charity giving over $600 million in donations to different community orgs and non-profits over the course of his mayoral tenure.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#770

Post by smsm42 »

1986 wrote: post #736
smsm42 wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here Looks like you do, because now we have - no discount, no business. > It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon Of course, losing several billions of added value and 25K jobs won't kill the economy of the size of New York. Just as shooting oneself in the foot won't kill most healthy people. But keep…

Amazon is already in New York and their own statement today says they will continue expanding those teams despite not moving forward with HQ2. No discount, still business. "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams."

> No discount, still business

Not the business that was conditional on the discount.

Post reply on HN