Breaking: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
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This could have been handled better. A few things where Amazon stumbled:
- They made a spectacle of the HQ2 search. Is it surprising that some quarters will eventually turn their attention to some of its faults?
- Rightly or wrongly, they came across as boasting about extracting lots of tax incentives from municipalities. If their agenda was to squeeze incentives from taxpayers, they could at least have been discreet about it.
- They exaggerated the job gains. The 25k jobs would really come in 10 years but they made it sound like it would come right away. People believed them and it backfired when it sounded like infrastructure and services would be swamped.
- Bad location, bad optics. Of course the locals in LIC, in their own small view of the world, saw it as 25k new workers being dropped into their neighborhood. But when compared with NYC in its totality, it would have been only a small gain or even net job loss once you count the retrenchments happening in banking, insurance, real estate and journalism. As I had repeatedly stated, they should have discreetly acquired vacated space in Downtown/FiDi and gradually expanded like what Google is doing. 60 Wall Street is being vacated. Nearby buildings like Chase Plaza have fragile leases. Amazon doesn't need space for 25k workers right away. Why did it insist on muscling its way into LIC?
It boils down to clumsy handling by Amazon, and clumsy/incompetent handling by NYC leadership.
The HQ2 search really was over the top and unnecessary. It reminded me of selections of host cities for the Olympics. I don't see how they thought it would benefit them. Surely they already had a few cities in mind that they were targetting before the search. Why not just approach them directly?
Was LIC chosen by Amazon? Or was it proposed by NY? There certainly is room downtown for Amazon. Heck, 2 WTC and 5 WTC aren't even built yet because of the lack of tenants.
What makes you think the jobs won't go to locals? Stop acting like all native New Yorkers are uneducated
Plenty of people who grew up and went to school in NYC and wanted to work in tech had to move to the west coast to get the types of jobs they wanted. While the tech sector is growing here in NYC, it doesn't compare to Silicon Valley and Seattle.
"The company instead felt that, with little sign that the opposition was dissipating, it was staring down a decades-long commitment to a political climate in which everything the company did would be scrutinized.
“Amazon had to think about what a long-term relationship with New York City would look like, and based on the experiences with local and state politicians to date, concluded it would be difficult at best,” one of the people said."
Amazon got their heads handed to them by wading into the polluted cesspool, and hot mess that is NYS/NYC politics. It is safe to say they are done here far as any headquarters in concerned. Jeff Bezos realized this was just the preliminaries; for long as Amazon had a HQ in NYC or even NYS every GD thing they did would be scrutinized. They would be sat down and or shaken down by the liberal, progressive democrat mob that runs this town and state constantly. Who the eff wants to subject their business (and themselves) to that BS?
I'm amazed Amazon thought there wouldn't be any opposition at all. There's always some opposition to everything in NYC.
Hopefully all of this did enough reputational damage to both local politicians and Amazon that New Yorkers will now actually vote, and also stop buying crap on Amazon.
This is the call for a new entrant to the marketplace to actually give Amazon competition. Someone can swoop in now and steal a fair amount of market share from Amazon. That is if liberal politicians didn't already kill the entrepreneurial spirit of NYC. The consumers need to stand up against Amazon. Likewise, the voters need to stand up against local politicians.
As someone who has worked extensively with Amazon as a client I am just shaking my head that many of you are just completely unaware of how disastrous this would have been for NYC'S diversity and culture. You don't have enough knowledge of the company to know the truth. VA will be better for them.
As someone who has worked extensively with Amazon as a client I am just shaking my head that many of you are just completely unaware of how disastrous this would have been for NYC'S diversity and culture. You don't have enough knowledge of the company to know the truth. VA will be better for them.
I've never once used Amazon out of principal of them being run by an oligarch. You should cease all your business relationships with them.
That being said, no matter how anti-Amazon I am and have been, I can't deny that this oligarch would have brought more revenue to NYC than expenses.
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