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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

#431

Post by whynotminot »

djsumdog wrote: post #138
supernova87a wrote: post #121

As much as the anti-gentrification politicians would claim a small victory, this is a loss for NYC and the future development / resilience of its economic base. Cities will keep on losing this kind of battle until some form of government or policy arises to counter the power of corporations (which are de facto increasingly taking the role of governments). Under our current regulations and incentives, I'm actually gla…

Isn't this exactly the opposite? Amazon would have destroyed the general economy in NYC like they did in Seattle. This is the city ignoring the big corporation and listening to their people. NYC doesn't need Amazon. It needs to fix it's rail system.

How is the Seattle economy destroyed?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#432

Post by chc »

melling wrote: post #54
melling wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won!

Was I too snarky? How about a little more? The planet is sad because 25,000 people won't be taking the subway to work.

If you want to support the environment, putting an Amazon campus in New York is about the least impactful way you could possibly go about it.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#433

Post by taurath »

Justsignedup wrote: post #346
bunderbunder wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wisconsin doesn't need to give out money, either. If anything, they need to not give out money. The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never…

Kentucky was a perfect example of this. They gave the best corporate welfare money can buy. And everyone left. There were no decent roads, schools, police. So there were no decent workers. The companies were basically given the best deal in a place with no workers. If anything the workers left even more because there was even less attractiveness to be there.

Its really hard to make a thoughtful reply to a thread like this without seeming like its just ivory tower dumping on red states. My feeling is that they've set up a basically every person for himself sort of society with (usually multinational or national) businesses as the primary benefactor rather than people.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#434

Post by a13n »

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 you're Elon, then it's celebrated.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#436

Post by SeanLuke »

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.

I think Arlington would disagree with you.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#437

Post by pradn »

siruncledrew wrote: post #207
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's spectacle reminds me of Lebron's "The Decision". It's one thing to work out the details and make an announcement, but to purposefully turn it into a show about "What can you do for me?" instead of "Here's what I can do for you" made it not sit well with people. Also, the pull-out letter also basically dumps the blame on state/local officials for not wanting Amazon, despite not all stakeholders being present…

LeBron's show raised like $6 million for various charities, so that's commendable.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#438

Post by onionsoup »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #399
raiyu wrote: post #70

After being a resident of NYC for 30 years and seeing the city change and become a technology hub and just a financial center I think this is a real loss for NYC. It would also be in Long island City which would provide a huge influx of new workers and move that neighborhood forward in development rapidly. The down side would be that it would push some residents and business owners out but this is simply a fact of li…

If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster. Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and…

They are also aggressively expanding into display ads, and the epicenter of the display ads ecosystem is in NYC. A lot of the hiring in tech they do in NYC was for ads positions.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#439

Post by ceejayoz »

siruncledrew wrote: post #207
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's spectacle reminds me of Lebron's "The Decision". It's one thing to work out the details and make an announcement, but to purposefully turn it into a show about "What can you do for me?" instead of "Here's what I can do for you" made it not sit well with people. Also, the pull-out letter also basically dumps the blame on state/local officials for not wanting Amazon, despite not all stakeholders being present…

Not just "What can you do for me", but "We'd never consider you for a HQ in a million years, but by all means give us a bunch of business intelligence gathered on your own dime we can use to site fulfillment warehouses..."

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#440

Post by taurath »

Spooky23 wrote: post #344
bunderbunder wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wisconsin doesn't need to give out money, either. If anything, they need to not give out money. The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never…

It depends on the business. If you’re capitalizing a big facility, even things like sales tax exemptions are big value adds. As long as some places in strategic areas do the incentive thing, it’s hard not to.

If you keep participating in the race to the bottom, you eventually end up on the bottom. The belief that any price in tax cuts will benefit your citizens in the form of "jobs" is a particularly toxic form of economic fundamentalism, and its hollowing whole states out.
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