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To some extent, a vertical campus does not provide as much of a flow as a horizontal campus does. That is also the same reason why financial firms want large floor plates and open floor plans. Notice Google goes after block long buildings in Chelsea and the West Side and not tall skyscrapers.
It's not as convenient when you have to take an elevator or stairs to just talk to someone.
Do you have any evidence to back that claim up other than speculating based on building shape?
I think this is great news, and points to the tremendous appeal of Hudson Yards, one of former Mayor Bloomberg's two signature accomplishments (the other one being the Cornell tech campus being developed on Roosevelt Island). NYS is actually quite generous with its "by right" subsidies, so Amazon will do just fine by doing the appropriate paperwork to collect those. It could have obtained cheaper rents and greater subsidies by locating jobs in the outer boroughs, but then it would have trouble attracting the same workers, since it's harder to commute to outer borough locations and the amenities in the neighborhood are much less extensive.
I think there's an element of habit/familiarity here. The big tech companies developed in areas that had a more suburban topology than NYC. Silicon valley has the classic California low rise sprawl topology. So that's what they're used to. The financial industry developed in NYC skyscrapers. They have no problem with high rises.
Quote:
Originally Posted by antinimby
To some extent, a vertical campus does not provide as much of a flow (there's a better word for this but I just can't think of it at the moment) as a horizontal campus does. That is also the same reason why financial firms want large floor plates and open floor plans. Notice Google goes after block long buildings in Chelsea and the West Side and not tall skyscrapers.
It's not as convenient when you have to take an elevator or stairs to just talk to someone.
Do you have any evidence to back that claim up other than speculating based on building shape?
Just curious.
The evidence is new office towers built for financial firms all have long bases like One Bryant Park, Goldman Sachs, 3WTC, the planned 2WTC, 50 Hudson Yards, 66 Hudson Blvd, the proposed 270 Park Ave (for Chase).
And also as I've already mentioned Google on the West side of Manhattan. In addition to owning 111 Eight Ave. (a block long landscraper), Chelsea Market, they've signed up for the to-be redeveloped St. Johns Terminal: https://www.6sqft.com/google-expandi...hudson-square/
I think there's an element of habit/familiarity here. The big tech companies developed in areas that had a more suburban topology than NYC. Silicon valley has the classic California low rise sprawl topology. So that's what they're used to. The financial industry developed in NYC skyscrapers. They have no problem with high rises.
As I've mentioned above, the latest trend for large financial firms in NYC is a tower on top of a long/wide base.
The evidence is new office towers built for financial firms all have long bases like One Bryant Park, Goldman Sachs, 3WTC, the planned 2WTC, 50 Hudson Yards, 66 Hudson Blvd, the proposed 270 Park Ave (for Chase).
And also as I've already mentioned Google on the West side of Manhattan. In addition to owning 111 Eight Ave. (a block long landscraper), Chelsea Market, they've signed up for the to-be redeveloped St. Johns Terminal: https://www.6sqft.com/google-expandi...hudson-square/
Why is that, it could be any number of reasons such as angling around zoning laws, desire for retails space, more amenities on base levels, etc.
Let's not get carried away yet. There's been no official announcements from Amazon yet. And this is still a far cry from the 50K headquarters level jobs. Amazon has presence in many cities across the country so its not like being in NYC is anything special.
Amazon had already reduced it to 25K jobs in two locations and the ramp up to 25K wasn’t very steep. It also would have likely come with consolidation of their Newark office/subsidiaries to LIC. Unless the economy tanks and/or Amazon hits a severe downturn, they’ll get to about the same numbers in about the same amount of time as their headcount in corporate here is already at the 5k mark and the headhunters for here have been aggressive.
I wasn’t against Amazon setting up shop in LIC, but tacking on more state incentives, even though small in comparison to the as-of-right ones, was an absurd move that had a very predictable backlash. Why be stupid enough to dump fuel on that fire?
Aside from direct incentives, Amazon already benefits based on being able to attract more people who want to live in this city. They were already handing out massive relocation packages to get people in NYC to go to Seattle and a lot of people didn’t bite.
The evidence is new office towers built for financial firms all have long bases like One Bryant Park, Goldman Sachs, 3WTC, the planned 2WTC, 50 Hudson Yards, 66 Hudson Blvd, the proposed 270 Park Ave (for Chase).
And also as I've already mentioned Google on the West side of Manhattan. In addition to owning 111 Eight Ave. (a block long landscraper), Chelsea Market, they've signed up for the to-be redeveloped St. Johns Terminal: https://www.6sqft.com/google-expandi...hudson-square/
These are mostly massive vertical campuses. From the ones I’ve been in in Hudson Yards, they have large open plans with essentially mezzanine layers and staircases and shorter run elevators linking these all in addition to the usual building wide elevators and staircases. They’re floors are very different from that of the large, horizontal Apple campus. The Google offices here, while not as tall, are also built with a lot of more open links between floors. Have you actually been inside these buildings before?
Amazon had already reduced it to 25K jobs in two locations and the ramp up to 25K wasn’t very steep. It also would have likely come with consolidation of their Newark office/subsidiaries to LIC. Unless the economy tanks and/or Amazon hits a severe downturn, they’ll get to about the same numbers in about the same amount of time as their headcount in corporate here is already at the 5k mark and the headhunters for here have been aggressive.
I wasn’t against Amazon setting up shop in LIC, but tacking on more state incentives, even though small in comparison to the as-of-right ones, was an absurd move that had a very predictable backlash. Why be stupid enough to dump fuel on that fire?
Aside from direct incentives, Amazon already benefits based on being able to attract more people who want to live in this city. They were already handing out massive relocation packages to get people in NYC to go to Seattle and a lot of people didn’t bite.
LIC would have been in the millions of square feet. This latest "insider rumor" is just a few floors worth of space. Also, this will not be headquarters. That now belongs to Arlington and Seattle. The offices here are no different than they have in many other cities. We've argued about this before. The backlash came from a very small group that was more against it based on the development part of the plan than anything else. In case you haven't notice (and I know you know this already) but NIMBYism is very common in NYC. Most residents both in LIC and the rest of the city were for Amazon.
Why is that, it could be any number of reasons such as angling around zoning laws, desire for retails space, more amenities on base levels, etc.
It's obvious you know very little about development if that's what you think. There's no angling around zoning and developers aren't building billion+ dollar office towers for the retail. They are building them to tailor to their main tenants' needs, which is large open floor plans.
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