
Amazon Leases New Manhattan Office Space, Less Than a Year After HQ2 Pullout - malloreon
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-leases-new-manhattan-office-space-less-than-a-year-after-hq2-pullout-11575671243
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keepper
That’s basically the footprint of 1500-2000 employees.

A FAR cry from the 25,000 they were planning for HQ2.

This is just normal expansion or office moves.

~~~
malloreon
[https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1203327592243355648](https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1203327592243355648)

"While we’re here, let’s clear up some GOP disinfo: \- “It’s 1500 jobs vs
25,000”: The 25,000 jobs figure was a 10-20 year fantasy # from Amazon, not a
promise or agreement. In exchange for that lack of commitment, they wanted
billions of public $. Their Y1 jobs projection was 700."

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hkmurakami
"Tech giant agrees to take 335,000 square feet in Hudson Yards neighborhood in
deal without any financial incentives from city or state"

But Hudson Yards certainly gave them large incentives, as is customary for
such anchor tenants.

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llampx
I think the furore was about the government giving away taxpayer money to the
biggest companies, who are not particularly good tenants and tend to change
the face of existing neighborhoods.

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sharkweek
Ah a nice Friday afternoon news dump using the tail between their legs to
brush this under the rug as much as possible.

I for one am shocked that a massive company interested in a bigger presence in
one of the world's largest cities would expand there, incentives or otherwise.

Good on NY for calling their bluff.

~~~
chance_state
What was the bluff?

My understanding was that the city and state were prepared to offer tax
incentives that were common in that context and that would bring in net
revenue.

~~~
brycesbeard
I don’t think it’s clear it would bring in net revenue. Also, the idea of
cities bidding for companies, using tax dollars, strikes a lot of people the
wrong way.

I thought the consensus was that NYC is better off providing those incentives
to smaller companies and not having hq2.

~~~
chance_state
Just from the wiki on HQ2:

>The subsidies offered to Amazon in New York include performance-based direct
incentives of $1.525 billion based on whether the company created 25,000 jobs.
This included a refundable tax credit through the state's Excelsior Program of
up to $1.2 billion, calculated as a percentage of the salaries Amazon expects
to pay employees over the following 10 years. Additionally, the Empire State
Development Corporation would give Amazon a cash grant of $325 million based
on the occupancy rates of HQ2 buildings over in the following 10
years.[47][73] Under an agreement with New York City's government, half of the
property taxes for the city's HQ2 campus would be waived, and the exempt
amount would go to the city's PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) fund to pay for
infrastructure improvements in New York City.[74][75] Both states proposed
that Amazon be given access to a helipad, and the New York state government
also promised to upgrade infrastructure in conjunction with HQ2's construction
there.[73]

Seems completely reasonable to me.

Then, some local politicians made public statements that showed that they
either did not understand how the incentives would work or that they were
willing to lie to get Amazon to leave.

Ex:

>New York governor Andrew Cuomo blamed Democrats in the New York State Senate
for the cancellation, and New York City mayor de Blasio said that Amazon
"threw away that opportunity," by making the announcement.[84][85] In
response, Ocasio-Cortez stated: "If we were willing to give away $3 billion
for this deal, we could invest $3 billion in our district ourselves if we want
to. We could hire more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of
people to work for that money if we wanted to."[86][87][88] Mayor de Blasio,
among others, criticized her, and those who had made similar remarks, for
suggesting the money, mostly in the form of tax credits, was now free to be
spent elsewhere.

~~~
brycesbeard
What about this seems reasonable? The positive ROI could easily be overwhelmed
by quality of life changes for current residents. Also not clear that this
type of tech hq is great for a neighborhood.

How beneficial is this kind of a deal, compared with the other options of what
could be done w the resources?

There is also an ick factor of negotiations like this, between private for
profit enterprises and governments. It sounds a bit like publicly funded
sports stadiums, which have been very popular yet financially terrible.

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javagram
HQ2 was going to be in Queens, not Manhattan. Even if HQ2 had gone ahead they
might still have expanded their space in Manhattan right? (As others pointed
out this is more like 1-2K employees rather than the 25K of HQ2)

But frankly the HQ2 pullout puzzled me from the beginning. They backed out of
the deal before it had even been turned down by the city or state as I
understand it.

I actually wondered at the time if they had just re-evaluated the plan of
splitting HQ2 and realized they didn’t need to expand that much in two
different east coast cities after all, and used the local complaints as an
opportunity to back out.

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jakelazaroff
Really makes you think that the entire HQ2 spectacle was a sham to extract
financial incentives from New York City all along.

~~~
jinushaun
The whole HQ2 beauty pageant was a sham because no matter what incentives,
Amazon ended up picking the two most obvious cities outside Seattle and SF!
You don’t need incentives to pick DC and NY. You pick them because only those
cities have 25,000 tech workers to hire! This was never going to happen in any
other city.

People were angry because many had hoped Amazon would rescue rust belt cities
or create a tech renaissance in those regions by being a strong magnet for
talent. They didn’t. Instead they picked NYC and DC/Arlington.

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nightfly
I wish more cities would call companies bluffs like this.

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malloreon
[https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1203083485252112384](https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1203083485252112384)

quote from tweet from AOC: "Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC
anyway - _without_ requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad
handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.

Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to
billionaires instead of poor families."

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seppin
There was no pullout. The 'HQ' won't exist but they'll hire the same amount of
new people.

They just wanted more tax breaks.

