Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"?
It really does feel like Amazon successfully played a lot of municipalities against each other to try and extract the biggest concessions, knowing all along that it didn't make sense to try and hire 50000 people in a decade in any one location.
I know that's how the game is played, but it's still feels a little disingenuous.
> Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"?
Not quite.
Amazon has satellite offices, that employ an order of magnitude fewer employees.
At 25k/branch, the term "regional headquarters" can be considered justified.
They did game the system though. Feels like they negotiated tax benefits with 50k employees in mind, and kept the same benefits while only giving locations 25k each.
This is good for tech in the east coast. Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.
Cornell tech much be so happy with their choice to open office on Roosevelt island.
I can see them being the biggest winners out of this whole set of events. NYU is probably also happy, having acquired NYU poly a few years ago.
> Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.
Those fin-tech companies almost certainly pay more than Amazon already. IIRC amazon has a cap of 275k for base pay, which means even if you're James Gosling that's the most you're getting, the rest has to come from RSUs which amazon also has a terrible vesting structure for. Amazon is regarded as a top-tier tech company, but their pay is not on par with any of the other companies (Google, FB, Uber, etc).
More tech presence is good, but I don't think big name companies are going to be too worried about their employees leaving to get paid less and have fewer benefits.
Very true. It's amusing to see people talk about "west coast wages" comparing favorably to wages in NYC.
The reason top tech generally kept out of NYC until recently is that they had trouble competing against investment bank salaries.
This only changed as top tech (especially FAANG) comp increased to catch up.
The less charitable interpretation is that top tech found itself compelled to pay more and more due to the talent crunch, until after all the increases it finally caught up with average NYC pay. Now, since it already pays at NYC-competitive levels, it might as well open offices in NYC and enjoy the talent pool there.
I am not sure if I agree with you on wage distributions.
Sure, Google and FB pay more and so do top investment banks / hedge funds in math/stat/algo positions . However, those simply are not the bulk of fintech employees.
The majority of fintech SDEs at GS,Morgan,etc. are working on software engineering and maintenance work. These roles pay closer to the $100k number than Amazon's quoted $150k. At least for new hires.
Pretty much this and fintech isn't this one thing that pays well but ranges from highly paid domain experts to generalists working on maintaining legacy systems. most generalists are not usually paid that well by SV big tech standards and the work environment is generally not as great. Amazon is more than competitive enough against the bulk of software engineering roles even at top investment banks and you will see lots of ex-top-IB engineers already working in their NYC office.
You don't understand Amazon's pay model completely. They have a backloaded vesting structure of RSUs, sure, but Amazon also provides a cash 'signing bonus' that vests monthly over years 1 and 2 in an amount that gives approximately the same total expected yearly comp for the first 4 years (same as calculated at time of grant; subject to change with stock movement).
My Amazon comp has been more than competitive with FB, Uber, Google.
That's very surprising that their base pay cap in Seattle is only $160k. I know several people, who aren't very senior, that are pretty close to that cap at Amazon.
If Amazon milked these cities to get the most value out of them, then they aren't going to dole out the red carpet with "west coast wages" for their new employees out of benevolence. I'm being cynical, but Amazon accumulated a wealth of data on cost of living, workforce statistics, and real estate to know how to play the HR game so what they pay their employees will always work out in Amazon's favor.
They did game the system though. Feels like they negotiated tax benefits with 50k employees in mind, and kept the same benefits while only giving locations 25k each.
If that's what happened, that's poor negotiation by the cities. If they made an offer based on employee counts, they could have required employee targets in return for the benefits being offered.
And if Amazon refuses to make firm employee count guarantees in return for the benefits being offered, then that's a pretty strong signal that you shouldn't rely on their promises.
The agreements do come with requirements around number of jobs created. Where Amazon played the system is in understanding how these deals get done.
If you have your politicians pitching the public on this huge 50k jobs deal, then they’re going to accept fewer jobs in the end rather than lose out altogether. Once a city commits itself to being in the Amazon race, losing is a huge political liability. Cities lose all leverage.
But paying a company $10,000 in benefits per employee for 1,000 jobs may not be as valuable to the community than paying $10,000 per employee for 20,000 jobs.
> Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages
I think you have that backwards. When I worked for Netflix I got an offer from a fin-tech firm that was double my already top of market Netflix salary. I chose to stay at Netflix because the fin-tech work sounded utterly soul crushing (and the work at Netflix was still great) and my wife didn't want to move to NYC. But had I taken it I would have made a lot more than any job here on the west coast.
> This is good for tech in the east coast. Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.
Amazon will represent a tiny portion of NYC's tech industry. Just a drop in the bucket. It won't move the dial much. Also fin-tech firms already compete with tech companies and they pay very well ( better than amazon ).
> Cornell tech much be so happy with their choice to open office on Roosevelt island. I can see them being the biggest winners out of this whole set of events. NYU is probably also happy, having acquired NYU poly a few years ago.
Neither cornell nor NYU needs amazon. It won't make a difference. The biggest winner will be amazon as they gain more political influence. That's what this move is about after all. Political influence in the two most important political centers of the US and the world.
This is exactly right. It is a sattelite office. And I am very skeptical of the 25k jobs number they are putting out. Especially if these are technical roles. This would amount to hiring 2k engineers a year.
You're sitting in a small room at a table. In front of you, a stack of paper containing a nearly-endless list of words. An Alexa device sits in a nearby corner.
Clearing your throat in preparation, you reach for the first sheet of paper and begin to read the list of words:
"Alacksah... Alicksah... Alorksah... Alucksah"
You think to yourself: for $15/hour, you've had worse jobs.
It feels like false advertising to me, and I'm surprised that people aren't making much noise about it. When Amazon first announced HQ2 they said that it would "be a full equal to our current campus in Seattle". I'm not sure how this can still be true given that it's half the size.
I'm skeptical Amazon will actually "create" 25k jobs. Hiring != Creating jobs. My assumption is that many currently employed individuals already living in NYC/DC will apply to Amazon for a salary and/or résumé boost. In such case, this is less about new jobs being created and more a reshuffling of the current labor pool.
I agree, but I wonder if it’s instead not that disingenuous since most of the tech community, and likely all the city candidates, knew Amazon’s true MO from the start.
Why do we give Amazon subsidies but not small businesses, who altogether provide over 50% of the jobs in America? The reason, as I understand it, is because Amazon as a single corporate entity provides far more jobs and holds more power.
Following that: Wouldn't the small businesses, due to our anti-trust regulations, actually be considered a cartel if they tried to negotiate as a group and gain the same tax advantages that Amazon has?
So, with that in mind, don't we have some very arbitrary laws? If I could buy up a few small businesses and negotiate with them as pawns, but without a common owner, it's anti-trust behavior?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this; IANAL, but would love to hear someone's opinion. Though game theory would likely prevent their continued cooperation, it seems quite unfair for small businesses that are unable, even in theory, to collectively negotiate on the same scale as Amazon.
Also not a lawyer, but cartel behavior usually refers to price-fixing and other anti-competitive behavior. Small businesses banding together the way you described would just be lobbying and already happens frequently.
Amazon should be investigated for anti-competitive practices, and their ability to negotiate this kind of a circus is certainly an indication of that. The problem has been two-fold -
1. The Sherman act is over 100 years old and was written to target 19th century trusts like Standard Oil and the railroads. These need to be updated to reflect new types of models of trusts and conglomeration (and accumulation of power) that have developed.
2. Enforcement - the SEC and FTC are largely toothless and everyone knows it. If you are a company that can afford a team of lawyers, its unlikely you will be penalized in a way that actually hurts.
The SEC does not enforce the antitrust laws. Do you mean the DOJ?
If you are going to take unsubstantiated potshots at government agencies you would sound more credible if you at least picked the right agencies.
* * *
On the substantive question here, I agree that small businesses already band together to lobby the government for special treatment. It's not an antitrust violation to ask the government for things, even if you couldn't get together and do those things directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noerr%E2%80%93Pennington_doctr....
Small businesses receive a number of subsidies in the form of tax breaks and exemptions based on size. For example Section 179 allows small businesses to deduct capital expenses below a certain amount instead of depreciating them, and Obamacare exempts business with less than 50 employees from providing health care. Federal regulatory flexibility and paperwork reduction laws release small businesses from a lot of expensive compliance work that a big company like Amazon has to do.
Any individual small business obviously doesn’t transact enough dollars to get the personal attention that Amazon does. But small businesses do come together to lobby for these things via chambers of commerce, trade associations, coalitions, regional development authorities, etc. And they tend to be pretty successful since small business is popular with both parties.
Generally speaking businesses that actually bring outside money into an area tend to be large businesses. There are obviously exceptions but small businesses usually rely on capturing economic activity that would have occurred anyway in the area. Amazon in NYC brings significant outside revenue from all over the US and in some cases the world into NYC. Most small businesses in NYC don't do this - they are mostly competing against another for the consumer that would've happened locally anyhow. Looking globally, even large businesses are just competing against one another in the same way but for any give municipality, there are benefits to being home to large corporations that are able to bring revenue from outside into the local economy.
As a New Yorker, I am super disappointed that they chose Long Island City. There were contenders where this stimulus could have been a paradigm shift. Instead, it's just a drop in the bucket for a city that is already growing recklessly.
My vote was for Newark, personally. Plenty of office space; access to NJIT, Rutgers, and Princeton; and good public transit that connects directly into NYC. Bezos and co. could have done some real good, but instead they will just be contributing to New York's biggest gripes (unsustainable subways, housing shortages, and an aggregation of labor into a few metropolitan areas).
> I am super disappointed that they chose Long Island City
Edward Glaeser's research on the economic and social benefits from density, summarized in Triumph of the City [1] and referenced in this guy's videos [2][3], is worth reviewing. Long story short, agglomeration breeds efficiencies which lead to further agglomeration. New York can uniquely offer things other cities can't because of its density. A few thousand people moving to Newark (assuming they're willing to move to Newark) won't bring those benefits there.
Over centuries, despite population growth and political upheavals, the relative size of cities in almost every geographic region is remarkably stable. That hints at deeper mechanisms which can't be unseated by something as small as Amazon moving.
Better policy: give people in Newark the support they need to move to wherever they like, whether that still be in Newark or somewhere else.
If this were necessarily true - that all industries would naturally gravitate to the regions of highest density - then why is so much of the banking industry now in North Carolina?
> all industries would naturally gravitate to the regions of highest density
I used a bit of shorthand, above, in saying "the relative size of cities in almost every geographic region is remarkably stable." Let me expand on "geographic region," because it reveals the tension that keeps the world from collapsing into Chongqing [1].
The size of a "geographic region" for this purpose is best defined as the distance the average economically-productive person can commute in a day. Back when people walked, towns tended to be about 10 miles apart. As transport technology improved, Manhattan ate its neighboring boroughs. It is now consuming Northern New Jersey and Connecticut. Barring a quantum leap in transportation tech, Charlotte is safe.
(On the seeds for dispersion: Certain economic activities, like mining and agriculture, occur somewhat independently of population centers. You go where the mineral veins and fertile land are. The fruits of those activities navigate the transportation geography, navigable waterways, flat areas across which rail lines can network and natural harbors, their wealth concentrating at the hubs. Thus, a fundamental industrial tension between distributed economic activity and the concentrating effects of transportation emerges.
In the modern world, those industrial distribution factors remain. Added to them are activities that are cheaper away from population centers, e.g. large-scale manufacturing and nuclear-power generation. Nevertheless, technology so far appears to be increasing the concentrating factor faster than the dispersion term by making (a) the distributed economic activities less labor-intensive and (b) increasing profits to those organizing our social structures-whether in finance, logistics or government–who benefit from the chance encounters proximity promotes.)
The Triangle has a number of good schools: Duke and UNC are both in the top 25 CS programs in the US. I've worked with some NCSU CS grads in the past and they've also been great.
After a decade in the city, I'll be moving to Westchester at the end of the year. When a "45 minute" subway commute started taking well over an hour and there's no possibility of owning your home, an hour on Metro North started looking a lot more viable.
I'm kind of relieved I wasn't the only pro-Newark HN reader (though I am based in central NJ so I'll admit bias). I honestly think it's close enough to the city for it to work as an "NY" office, rent is cheaper and home ownership isn't a pipe dream, and it's close to an Amtrak stop that would allow quick access to the DC HQ!
I'm absolutely baffled why they did not select Newark as well. It is close enough to NYC via not only Amtrak and NJT but also via PATH, ripe for redevelopment ( already in progress ) but not yet so developed that the additional infrastructure is nearly impossible to add.
Adding a subway line to NYC subway is like herding a multiple feral cat colonies.
> Newly elected Democrats in the NY state legislature might block the NYC Amazon subsidies and put the funds into student debt relief instead
I doubt this is a real risk. The Governor is strongly behind this proposal, and has a lot of goodies to trade with the Senate. More likely: Amazon's move prompts new spending on infrastructure and community development around LIC and in random upstate districts whose votes are needed.
The current situation we have is insane. It's like the height of the gilded age with no trust busting in sight, the largest corporations in the land buy out politicians and are openly taking public money.
A lot of mayors did that. Truth be told, even New York City's mayor did that.
Problem is that it doesn't make a difference. Lots of other mayors will give the incentives. And, as in the case of NYC, sometimes the governors will come in and override the decision not to give subsidies anyway. (Although in the case of NYC it likely wouldn't have really mattered. I suspect they would have won the HQ2 subsidies or no subsidies.)
Lots of mayors will give the incentives? Fine. Let them. If you think it's a bad idea - or even a bad idea for your city - then don't give them. If someone else will make the mistake, let them make the mistake (and reap the consequences).
not good.
govt paying off student loans just makes them a sure bet and validates the behavior.
Govt has the power to allow you to default, but why don't they?
Excessive rents and debts are a drain on consumer spending and ultimately harm the economy. The root cause isn't greedy students wanting an education (weird way to think about it), but tuition costs ballooning out of control.
The root cause are greedy loan providers that know payment back is a sure bet. My 50,000 foot view of the problem is that it is far to easy to obtain a huge sum of money to go to school for a career with no job prospects. My solution would be to factor in degree and ability to repay, making loans much harder to get. Also, I would revoke many degree paths from the ability to get approved federal loans.
This falls right in line with my thinking. I've listened to so many NPR stories about students suddenly realizing right at graduation that, "oh, holy shit, I have to pay $900/month loan payment!"
Student debt is harder to discharge than other debts. You cant even discharge it through bankruptcy. One reason this was done was to reduce interest rates.
I've never seen anyone cite convincing evidence that there was a real problem with students declaring bankruptcy to get out of their loans.[0]
On the other hand, having our bankruptcy system not apply to a meaningful portion of U.S. lending does create some incentive problems, like the fact that lenders have no incentive to make sure you'll be able to handle repayment, so you can take out huge student loans and find out at the end you have earned a worthless degree and that it will be massively difficult or nearly impossible for you to repay the loan.[1]
Currently, a debtor may discharge student loans in bankruptcy only upon establishing that repaying such loans would impose an undue hardship, but this has not always been the case. Prior to 1977, student loans were automatically discharged in bankruptcy.
Perceived abuse of the bankruptcy system, as opposed to any real abuse, drove Congress to change this state of affairs. A 1976 GAO report had found that less than 1 percent of all
federally insured and guaranteed educational loans were discharged in bankruptcy. In other words, no abuse.
I should be clear that I wasn't trying to argue that the laws around student loan debt are just, or fair. I'm just saying that one of the alleged justifications for the current state of affairs is that the difficulty of discharging student debt leads to lower interest rates.
> Once you get an "education", you can't exactly have another company repossess that from you.
That's true of all unsecured debt (hence, “unsecured”), not a special feature of education debt that justifies treatment different than general unsecured debt.
Tax kickbacks of $48k/job in NY and $22k/job in VA wth average salary of $150k/yr. Also $325mil in NY and $23mil in VA for just occupying the space. All well below the projected billions in direct investment and tax amounts.
Not sure whether worth it or not, but it's all around economic growth which I see as a good thing in general. We can argue about public funds and growing pains, but this problem is better than the opposite problem. If you are in the area and oppose along with the majority of your peers, say so at the polls. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that, outside of pro-tax/anti-big-corp circles, this is gleefully welcomed.
Consider, in Wisconsin, we have to pay on the order of roughly USD400M to USD500M per year, for about the next ten years. And we're a state that, compared to New York, is mired in abject poverty.
And to add insult to injury, that USD400M per year is for only HALF the jobs that New York is getting. And they don't pay as well.
Wisconsin also doesn’t have corporate taxes so a lot of the Foxconn benefits were structured as direct payments rather than tax breaks.
And many weren’t even dependent on Foxconn employing a certain number of people, which is why now that their plans have scaled down the numbers look disastrous.
> assuming 15k jobs in New York is $75MM/yr, which is a lot of money
They'll probably pay it back in payroll taxes. The subsidy effect is an unfair tipping of the scales in favor of large companies. But mass has its benefits. You can't renovate LIC in the hope that businesses will move there. An anchor employer underwrites infrastructure with broader social benefits without requiring the city to co-ordinate lots of smaller employers. (The follow-on question being, how do we make such co-ordination easier.)
Unless I'm misreading this, it looks like Nashville got the best deal
> Amazon will receive performance-based direct incentives of up to $102 million based on the company creating 5,000 jobs with an average wage of over $150,000 in Nashville.
This is a pretty big deal for Nashville, and costing them only $12,000 per job is a pretty big win.
As someone who lives in Nashville and can see the future location out my office window, Nashville might be getting jobs but we don't have the infrastructure to support what we already have. The post Amazon puts out makes it sound like we have public transit (we basically don't) and the recently downvoted transit bill means we can't readdress it anytime in the near future. I don't really see anything good out of it for those of us who already live here and have no interest in picking up one of those jobs.
Nashville makes sense for anyone doing distribution. Great airport with tons of planes, pilots, distribution center workers already there for the largest couriers. Also because you can reach 60% of Americans by road in 1-2 days and efficient hub and spoke distribution for air freight.
The University of Tennessee ranks well in supply chain & logistics, so it makes sense. I believe Lyft opened a similar operations office in Nashville. Unfortunately, Nashville could really use strong tech jobs as well, which the state is sorely lacking. I wish Amazon had chosen Nashville as one of the main HQs.
The E/M/F/R tunnels are already some of the most congested, most delayed, least pleasant segments in the entire city. As much as I welcome Amazon's move, I don't envy the poor suckers who have to ride in and out of Queens.
The "interesting" thing about that location is that it actually isn't especially especially convenient for commutes to/from places where young well-paid techies would normally choose to live.
I assume this is a big incentive to improve those lines and Amazon will hopefully lobby for such. Similar to their support for public transportation in Seattle.
I live here. LIC subway access is terrible. Not driving to work in NYC means you either work in Manhattan or you are taking a bus, probably more than one.
Interesting to see the Virginia state ("commonwealth") "incentives". At the state level, the original VA pitch was out near Dulles (the currently state-owned CIT land). Pitches for Arlington et al. were done by the county as far as I know. Presumably once Amazon zeroed in on the Arlington area the state was willing to go along.
(Apple has supposedly been in talks with the state about the CIT land as well, just in a less public fashion than Amazon, so I assume something is still going to go in there soon, whether Apple or something else.)
Can't believe how many subsidies they got, to me it's a question of fairness, why should we subsidize them, but not others? I get that they are doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs, but there certainly have been negative sides to what they've done (gentrification, poor working conditions for many employees in their warehouses).
They're doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs? The people will be shipped in from all around the world and displace the current communities. This destroys communities. This segregates poor & lower income people out. Only already rich people get to experience the benefits of this.
The subsidies and tax cuts they got are an embarrassment to our system and a wonderful look into how this country isn't working for lower classes and small local business that actually build communities. Amazon doesn't need subsidies, this is just a race to the bottom.
That's partially true. Not sure where you are from, but as opposed to places like San Francisco, NYC has a functioning real estate private sector that reacts rationally to increases in demand by increasing supply. This is not to say gentrification is not a thing, but it's not like in San Francisco where there's basically a set housing stock and new people completely displace the old people. Instead new people displace some of the old residents, but they also rent or buy newly built housing. In the long run Amazon's choice is probably good for nyc. It could be very good if nyc manages to get its act together regarding subway and infrastructure.
And yet NYC still has some of the highest rent in the country. For someone making 60k or less it doesn't matter much if the rent is 2k or 3k a month, it's all totally unaffordable anyway and those people are either pushed further out from where they work, or if they're young they split the rent amongst 2-4 people.
Those are Manhattan prices. If you travel more than 10 minutes outside Manhattan the rent drops. This normally means long commutes, but with the new HQ in queens, workers could commute from the cheaper parts of queens.
And San Francisco? Our 4,100 new apartments is just one per 204 persons. Only three cities managed to do less: San Diego (225), Chicago (324), and New York City (396).
This mentality that we should be thankful for "job creators" is incredibly toxic. Amazon hiring people because it benefits their bottom line, its not a charity, skip the "community service" crap.
A big company wants to bring some high paying jobs to a large, prosperous metro area that’s doing just fine without them: shower them with money!
Someone is on the verge of literally starving to death: make them pee in a cup before you give them any food to make sure they’re not an addict.
The Feds ought to use their interstate commerce power to put a stop to these races to the bottom to court individual projects. If some locality wants to be low-tax and business-friendly then go for it, but do it for everyone.
You say gentrification like its a pejorative term.
Maybe its your recurring assumption that fairness has anything to do with this. Just excise the prosperity preaching from your brain and you'll see that none of this is related.
They provide a perceived dollar benefit to the governing institution, the governing institution has the authority to catalyze that, the end.
>You say gentrification like its a pejorative term.
I mean, it kind of is. It not only refers to 'improvements' but also the displacement of anyone below the middle class as a result of those improvements.
You mean like they were before the area became gentrified? It's not an intrinsic property of neighborhoods to become gentrified - it's an external process forced upon a populace by governments and corporations and landlords
Moving is a substantial expense. Should people be forced to consider the likelihood that housing costs that are currently within their means might rise outside of them at some unknown point in the future, and to some unknown degree, when choosing housing? How exactly should that be considered?
It seems regressive, socially, to force this consideration on the people least able to afford it. After all, people who "choose" low-quality housing tend to do so because their choice is necessarily limited, by their lack of access to wealth and financing, to housing that is more attractive for redevelopment.
This has been happening for hundreds of years. Part of being a responsible adult is managing your finances and being prepared. It is crazy to me that so much attention these days is basically advocating for the babysitting of adults.
It is not as if this will happen overnight, either. If we allow people to stay in subsidized housing we remove the biggest carrot for self-motivation.
Your perspective seems narrow. What you view as “babysitting” is an effort to sustain communities.
What are the effects on a kid’s development if they have to change schools and friend groups because their family is displaced due to rising rent? What if people have to move away from family because they can’t afford to stay? How does it impact businesses if their long term employees are suddenly moving away?
Rapidly removing people from communities causes damage to the social fabric of a community, it’s not just about economic effects.
That carrot is unobtainable for most people. Janitors, teachers, deli workers, city park employees, dog walkers, babysitters, waiters, waitresses, contractors. Doesn't matter how well you "manage your finances" if your salary basically has a cap on it.
The only ones benefitting are overpaid tech workers supplanting people that do actual tangible work that makes the city tick.
Funny that a tech worker posting on the HN playground is addressing people who deal with real life struggles (raising a family, making increasing rent) how to be a "responsible adult."
this comment assumes people are poor because they lack self motivation or "grit to pull themselves up by the bootstraps", which in general i believe to be false.
In a society where each individual plays an increasingly specialized role, socially-responsible institutions that step in and cover common needs sounds less like babysitting and more like welcome encapsulation of complex functions. This is also a society where class stratification is rooted heavily in educational disparities. It doesn't seem... rational?... to expect people with little savvy or control over their circumstances to exhibit more savvy or exert more control than those with access to more of both.
Approaching gentrification as some sort of just-world force of nature, and those thrown up in the turmoil of it as willing-by-way-of-neglect, is backwards.
>Nobody is entitled to live in a certain area for a certain amount of money.
Not inherently, no. But legally speaking there are concepts like "rent control" and "adverse possession" that were created to assert on some level that people do, in fact, have a right to continue living in a space that they've occupied for a reasonable duration.
Accelerating pushing the price up of the non-rent controlled units in the finite landspace, making only the most extreme examples of gentrifiers possible and out of reach for more individuals and businesses
But then subsidizing one business to do it anyway is the problem.
Is avoiding a distorted market more important than avoiding disrupting the lives of people?
“Nobody is entitled to live in a certain area for a certain price.” isn’t really true if they were there first and have established a family or a community.
Maintaining a functioning free market is not inherently a moral goal, although many seem to think it is.
There will always be disruption. Disruption is part of being human. How long do I have to live in a place to declare that I am no longer responsible for maintaining my financial stability and I get to demand free rent from the city? 2 years? 10 years?
So do the developer incentives that have driven urban redevelopment for the last 2 decades. Hence, in part, the glut of luxury apartments and the ever-tightening affordable housing market.
I'm skeptical at the choice of Crystal City. (Sorry, that's where it is, call it what you want.) I think being "urban" mattered a lot to them, and Crystal City has the most opportunity for a significant tenant to move in.
But that "opportunity" is there because it's a secondary or tertiary choice for employers. Considering that 70%+ people are commuters, a) there are more desirable locations no matter where you're coming from, and b) there's no direct way to get there, other than Route 1, which is going to be a disaster.
No major highways or arteries, Metro goes through Arlington first, etc.
If you live in DC, you have to leave the city. If you live to the west, you'd prefer Dulles, Tysons, or Arlington. If you're to the south, it's Alexandria. To the north, Bethesda. To the west... probably Baltimore, or you have to drive all the way through DC.
I would imagine they are thinking longer term than you are. Crystal City is 3 Metro stops from downtown DC, 10 or 15 minutes, but still has room for Amazon to build and rebuild in their image. It has no culture or community, it's a blank slate. They can move in now easily, build their own buildings and remake the area within 5 years. There is room for housing as many of their employees within 3 metro stops/15 minute bus ride as might wish to live there.
They could have gone to Dulles and had a blank slate to build on, but they don't think their employees and prospective employees want to live there. It's at least an hour from downtown during rush hour. It's an exurb, and Amazon does not see that as the future.
With some infrastructure upgrades, they could merge the VRE and MARC routes to have regional rail that runs through DC between Maryland and Virginia. Crystal City already has a VRE station, so this could enable relatively painless commutes from as far away as Manassas, Fredericksburg, Rockville, and even Baltimore.
However, there are major organizational and political hurdles that would have to be tackled to put any new infrastructure to effective use, so I wouldn't hold my breath. But maybe Amazon's choice of location could spur things in the right direction.
Agreed, Crystal City is a terrible choice if you are trying to attract talent in the DMV. Who wants to make that commute? Not sure why they didn't choose Dulles - more space, new metro infrastructure, Dulles airport access and existing AWS offices and data centers.
Well, there is no good commute in the DMV for one, but Dulles/Herndon/Tysons at least has new metro stops and more highway infrastructure than to Crystal City. Plus, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, AWS, et al are all already off the Dulles toll road. If you are in tech, there is a high probability you are headed out that direction anyway.
Honestly a ferry across the Potomac could make a lot of sense if it runs frequently enough. Could be a release valve for a lot of that Metro congestion, and otherwise the 14th St bridge would be nightmarish for 4+ hours a day.
"National Landing is the newly defined interconnected and walkable neighborhood that encompasses Crystal City, the eastern portion of Pentagon City and the northern portion of Potomac Yard. "
Ok, so Amazon is trying to declare these three areas to be one big neighborhood with a fancy new name. They certainly don’t think small! I don’t like the name but otherwise they make it sound pretty good.
I still don't understand why NYC gave up so much by way of incentives and subsidies. With things the way they are, seemingly Amazon needed NYC, way more than NYC needed amazon.
Both cities should pull their subsidy packages. Amazon negotiated in bad faith, under false pretenses. The conditions under which any subsidies were offered no longer apply.
Read the subsidy agreements that the cities actually put out. They were clearly aware of exactly what they were getting even if the general public was not.
Could you state what the false pretenses were, and how those conditions no longer apply? All you have here is a dogmatic assertion with no supporting information. Often that is done by people who have strong beliefs but no basis for them, so if you have a basis, stating it can prevent you from getting lumped in with the "dogmatic unreality" people.
If the subsidies are per job, is that a problem? Pay half as much for half as many jobs - seems reasonable to me. Doesn't seem like "false pretenses" in a way that materially affects the deal.
Even if they are "per job", the per job price was still based on a total of 50,000 jobs.
If you go to Bob's widget factory and place an order for 50,000 widgets, you'll likely get a different per widget price than if you place an order for 25,000 widgets.
If you say at first that you want 50,000 and Bob starts making preparations for that many, then at the last minute you say "Nah, I only want 25,000", Bob is rightfully going to be pissed and you're going to pay a higher per-widget price if your order isn't cancelled altogether.
> Are you just an Amazon shill who jumps in to try and suppress any criticism of them?
No, I'm not. Are you the kind of commenter who accuses everyone who disagrees with you of being a shill, so that you can control the conversation? (There's at least as much evidence of that than there is of me being a shill...)
There have been stories about this for months. It's reasonable to assume that most people reading and commenting on them are familiar with the history of this long running story and the well publicized last minute change in the terms of the agreement by Amazon in the last week.
If you are honestly unaware of this and need it explained to you, then in the future take some time to familiarize yourself with the context of what's going on or ask some questions before you jump in and start insulting people.
I was rather careful not to insult you. I merely said that your style resembled that of obsessive ranters and nut cases; I didn't accuse you of being one.
You came at least as close to being insulting as I did. In the future, take some time to familiarize yourself with peoples' posting history before you jump in and question whether they are shills.
A parallel post to this one, by imgabe, has been flag-killed. While I don't agree with the post, I had to look very carefully at my history in this thread to see whether he was right in what I said. His post had enough of a basis that I think flag-killing it was unwarranted.
- New York City - Amazon services for advertising, publishing, media
I would bet Seattle sees those roles slowly pull towards their respective HQs. It's already happening with advertising and NYC as far as I can tell from their job listings.
And if in the future, for some reason, Amazon is required to break up, this would make it a little less messy.
I grew up in QUEENS. Well LIC is a melting pot. The amazon workers can live in sunnyside queens or greenpoint brooklyn. I think with AMAZON coming to LIC that whole area is gonna light up. Also lets not forget Roosevelt Island is right there. You'll see new development in Roosvelt island. Buildings have been going up in LIC for the last 10 years. You have Jackson Hights. Sunnyside, greenpoint, also the boogie down bronx has places to live,. so the transit system is gonna be PACKED. the train is always late in NYC / Queens. LIRR will also see increased traffic from Jamaica to hunters point or woodside. You can get LIRR from Forrest hills or key Gardens. This will allow for new eating places to open and other small business will pop up to meet the needs of the 25k people they plan to hire. I will be looking for business opportunities my self! :-)
Why didn’t anyone ask the residents if they wanted a megacorporation to move into their neighborhoods? Amazon insisted on absolute secrecy moving forward and elected officials went right along with it.
Queens residents are outraged by this news. No one asked them. How is this democracy at work?
Is there really any good reason to hate Amazon for this? It sounds like they gave an offer, and the offer was good, so people wanted it. I like freedom. This sounds like freedom. Is it not?
There is a lot of empty office space in Crystal City. They can move in almost immediately. They can then start figuring out if they want to build something new.
Since each city is only receiving half the benefit they thought they were bidding on, presumably they’ll each get to cut their bids in half — the subsidies, tax abatements, infrastructure spending promises, etc.? But I haven’t seen any notice of this in the news coverage. [rerun]
This entire competition was an obvious sham to try to equivocate really desperate cities willing to give basically anything to have a major tech company headquarters, to the inevitable choice amazon was going to make of california or the coastal northeast, so they could extract maximum concessions.
Its disgusting this worked as well as it did, $48k/job in tax concessions from NYC and $22k/job from VA, expect to see a lot more of this in the future. Hopefully governments wake up and realize its a race to the bottom that advantages megacorps to such a point that having them is barely worth it, while at the same time hurting local businesses.
EDIT: the tax deductions are one time, not per year, i mixed that up.
>$48k/job/y in tax concessions from NYC and $22k/job/y
One of us is misunderstanding this - I am understanding it as 48k/job and 22k/job, not per year. 48,000*25,000 = 1.2 bil, if it was every year for 10 years, it would be 12 bil.
I was similarly confused by this...its not like its a Walmart superstore undurcutting the local mom-n-pop shop.
That said, perhaps the fear is "over-cutting" -- that HQ2 slurps up top talent from local tech businesses and overbids salaries. I can totally see that happening, especially with the only-handful of truly high-tech businesses in the Northern Virginia community. This is a bad thing short term and a good thing long term.
Small and medium businesses don't have the political clout to demand sweetheart deals like this, so they are at a disadvantage for both talent, and industry competition if applicable.
If you give so much away, the tax benefits cease existing.
I haven't read anyone citing Google also setting up shop in NYC. This might be way off but could Amazon and Google be competing for political influence in NYC?
> Long Island City is a mixed-use community where arts and industry intersect
It's mostly empty warehouses, housing projects, and luxury condos. There's very little in terms of culture or even basic needs, like grocery stores.
> Long Island City has some of the best transit access in New York City, with 8 subway lines, 13 bus lines, commuter rail, a bike-sharing service, and ferries serving the area
Realistically it's the densely overcrowded 7 train, getting worse each year, with no relief in sight. Once the L shuts down in 2019 the G will be absolutely overrun.
> and LaGuardia and JFK airports are in close proximity
Getting to LGA involves taking a train to a bus, by car it's a breeze, JFK is an hour away by train.
This comment is skewing what LIC is. LIC is a neighborhood in its infancy because it was rezoned from primarily industrial to residential/commercial only a few years ago. But it's basically the perfect neighborhood for the city to grow into. In defense of the neighborhood I lived in for years:
> There's very little in terms of culture
There are literally 100s of artists who work out of LIC. Many of those "empty warehouses" are actually art studios full of spaces rented out by artists. It's the densest concentration of artists in the outer boroughs, and probably beats out 90% of Manhattan too. Check out the LIC art walk, or the LIC art open, or PS1. I agree with the lack of basic amenities (see: neighborhood in infancy), but lack of culture is an absurd accusation.
> Realistically it's the densely overcrowded 7 train, getting worse each year, with no relief in sight
Why not mention the E, N, W lines, which feed a lot of Queens and more of Manhattan than the 7? LIC (especially Court Square) is a convenient neighborhood to commute into, if it's nothing else. Also, LGA and JFK are both straight shots on the highway (15 and 30 minutes respectively) and JFK is easy by subway+airtrain. This beats out most of the rest of the city, any other criticism should be pointed towards the placement of the airports.
Beyond MOMA PS1, whose influence on the neighborhood is hard to understate, there has been a lot of independent art and theater projects in the area. (RIP Five Points.) Food wise, there's M.Wells, Mu Ramen, and a handful of other Michelin ranked restaurants with easy access to Queens' wide array of diverse food options. It also has the probably highest ratio of breweries to people of any neighborhood in New York. And there's the largest rock climbing gym in the city, plus a separate BKB branch.
Before I moved out to SF for work, I was an adamant believer that LIC was the most underrated neighborhood in New York. (And I did not live in the eye sore condos.) From Amazon's standpoint, I think they nailed it. New York's tech scene is already growing and the Cornell Tech campus is a short walk from LIC. Unfortunately, I don't think the small art scene that broke out of Brooklyn will survive Amazon's reign.
I'm aware of the zoning history, I'm a former resident as well. Good counterpoints, all. I think "the perfect neighborhood for the city to grow into" is an optimistic and accurate description.
>It's the densest concentration of artists in the outer boroughs
Surely this crown belongs to Bushwick, but LIC is not entirely devoid of arts and culture (Flux Factory being an example of a repurposed warehouse you describe).
Where are Amazon employees going to live? Probably not out on Queens Boulevard on the 7/E/F/M/R so they'll be taking the train in the opposite direction. If they live on Long Island, they can take LIRR to Hunterspoint Ave (infrequent service, but demand can change that). If they live in New Jersey or in MNR territory, they'll take the train to Manhattan and then take the subway in the opposite direction from the main flow. If they live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, they're taking the train in the reverse peak direction; trains that are largely empty today because very few people do the reverse commute.
Similarly, JFK is 15 minutes to Jamaica on LIRR and 10 minutes on the Airtrain from there to the terminal. LGA... not super great. Probably take the 7/E/F/M/R to Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave. and transfer to the express bus (my preferred way of getting to LGA and I live in Brooklyn).
Finally, as I understand it they are going to use office space in the Citi tower... which is already built and I assume has had tenants throughout its life. So the transit problems were already understood.
All in all, I see this whole thing as completely non-newsworthy. 30,000 employees is nothing compared to the 1 million that already commute in to NYC from the suburbs and the 5 million that already take the subway.
I might be wrong, but are you suggesting getting to LGA from LIC is ...inconvenient? I think in all of NY there is no relationship between neighborhood and airport that would be better? Not sure about public transport since I would think everybody would take a lyft/uber/taxi from LIC to LGA. It's 10min and cheap.
LGA itself tends to be inconvenient. Getting there from LIC is no worse than from anywhere else, but you're still ending up at LGA. The construction crews sincerely apologize for any unexpected convenience you may experience.
This need not be a thread battle over airport commute times, but I've made the trip from LIC/Astoria to JFK many times and even with a good amount of train luck it roughly takes an hour door to door via public transit. In no situation has it been on the order of 30 minutes.
I spend a lot of time passing through in this neighborhood, and can mostly confirm this.
In fact, about those luxury condos and housing projects… they're _very_ new, popping up within the past two years and more coming all the time. I’ve been wondering for years what kind of people make the sort of money to afford these places and would also _want_ to live in that area… now I wonder if this decision wasn't made long ago, and word was carefully leaked to various developers to get the housing ready.
It’s not enough to store 25,000 workers, but it’s a lot. Maybe I’m naive but I feel like the immediate area can contain this, with minimal spillover to Manhattan and Brooklyn. (Like, if the workers want to. The area is definitely not the kind of hipster chic or glamour chic or any chic that people come to New York for.)
> ... the immediate area can contain this, with minimal spillover to Manhattan and Brooklyn.
I think if Amazon ends up building there (and that's still far from a given at such a scale) employees will end up residing all over the place. Just drop a pin and take a radius that is as large as humanely possible for a daily commute.
People in high paying jobs are often willing to make huge sacrifices in commute-time to land a desirable job while keeping the housing situation that suits them. There are folks with absolutely insane commutes in the NYC area, will Amazon employees will be any different?
The development in LIC wasn't about Amazon in particular, but amazon is choosing that location for the same reason. People were given huge tax breaks to redevelop LIC.
>>now I wonder if this decision wasn't made long ago, and word was carefully leaked to various developers to get the housing ready
I don't know about this but for years now (around ten years now) I've heard about developers trying to transform locations that used to be all factories into residential neighborhoods. Slowly but surely this has been happening all along Brooklyn's riverside, which used to be dominated by factories.
I highly doubt this was leaked to developers, I think this was developers realizing that long island city was within close proximity to Manhattan and people want luxury rentals without the price of paying for one in Manhattan.
This is exactly why my partner and I live there. It's cheaper, cleaner, and generally calmer than Manhattan. Plus, we have an extraordinary view of the Manhattan skyline from a terrace we could NEVER afford in Manhattan.
The groundwork for the redevelopment of LIC was laid in the City's failed bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. While the bid failed, Bloomberg continued to push for redevelopment and IIRC lead some rezoning. Would not surprise me if developers started buying up land or ground leases around 2004–2005 and held onto them for a few years.
Vernon Blvd and some of the areas closer to Greenpoint are pretty lively, but you're mostly right about the emptiness. Biking through LIC can be kind of spooky (although not actually dangerous), and LIC is where a lot of "fight under abandoned bridge" scenes are filmed in NYC these days.
The M and E trains all go to LIC at Court Square or the station you take the moving sidewalk to. Depending on where the offices are, the N, Q, and R could all be closer than the 7. I feel worse for the renters in Greenpoint or Astoria, where many workers are going to go depending on the office location, than I do for the ones in LIC. Either way, this will hopefully also cause MTA to re-extend the G train to Jackson Heights.
The 7 and the G are not as important if the Amazon people live in many parts of Queens instead of Manhattan or hipster parts of Brooklyn. As I'm sure many will, since it's currently one of the cheaper areas of the city (Astoria and LIC aside).
LGA would be a quick cab or Uber ride for most people, well within Amazon employee affordability range.
JFK would be comparatively quick by cab/Uber or yeah about 60 minutes by transit. That's par for the course for major metro area airports, certainly including Amazon's hometown of Seattle.
This could be what LIC actually needs. It has all this new housing, but it feels like a ghost town. So now there will be all this demand for local amenities that could transform the area. Still unsure if this will be beneficial in the long term or not, but will be interesting to see how it plays out.
That's sort of the norm in an area like this I think. When the Seaport in Boston started to be redeveloped amenities were pretty sparse for a while. (To be sure a lot of development was initially around the convention center and adjoining hotels.) These days the restaurant situation is decent but it probably took a good 10 years.
If a lot of Amazon employees end up living in Manhattan, they'll be doing a reverse commute, which is probably a good thing for everyone.
As to LGA, remember that it can't have direct flights to the West Coast (e.g.: Seattle...) for historical reasons. Maybe this will help rectify the situation.
There are several factors why LGA has a 1500 miles flight radius restriction (with Denver being the only grandfathered exception), but the primary one is due to the length of the runways unable to cope with larger planes on cross-country routes.
It's the 7, G, E, M, R, N, and W. Queens and Queensboro Plazas are only a couple blocks from the Citi building. I agree though - this happening during the L train shutdown will absolutely nuke the G. The E and 7 are already at capacity. The M and R have a good bit of room, though. As for the N and W, they also still have a good bit of capacity, it's just a shame, because rents in Astoria were just starting to go down a bit :/
The G is nowhere close to its maximum capacity: It currently only runs 1/2 length trains, and the frequency is much less than what could be supported if there were more demand. Even during the L train shutdown the G should be fine as long as the MTA increases service appropriately, which they have stated they will do.
The real chokepoints for the G will be the transfers to Manhattan-bound trains: to the E at Court Square and to the A/C at Hoyt-Schermerhorn. Those stations will be way overloaded, and the MTA hasn't announced anything that would mitigate this significantly.
However, Amazon-bound commuters shouldn't contribute significantly to this, since they will be exiting the station at Court Square, not transferring. Workers commuting in on the E/M from deeper in Queens might have some issues getting off the train in a very crowded station, but at least they won't be contributing to the capacity problem on the way to Manhattan.
Even with the test trains it's it's spotty at best. I work off Greenpoint which is 2 stops to court sq and frequently the trains are backed up/delayed or by the time they arrive it's a clusterfuck.
I can't imagine what's going to happen then the L actually shuts down and people no option but to take the G.
Strongly disagree about culture and basic needs, I have two grocery stores walking distance to me (urban market, food cellar) and several delis/pharmacies, the 7 is closest but the E and M are subway options from Court Square with the N/W from Queensboro, there's a great park (Gantry), plenty of art studios, a few museums (MOMA PS1, Museum of Moving Image a few minutes away), a quick walk/uber to Astoria or Greenpoint for other nightlife or food.
Considering Amazon helped pay for the South Lake Union streetcar, I imagine that this announcement will expedite the approvals for and the construction of the BQX street car.
Wow so that’s how they got the money for that. Can somebody tell me what the point of those streetcars are? They’re just slow buses that are limited to tracks.
I think this is a misimpression. About half the funding came from various government agencies, and about half from a special assessment on property near the line. The main owner along the corridor was Vulcan (Paul Allen), who rented a lot of space to Amazon, but as far as I know at the time (~2007) Amazon didn't own any property along the line.
The BQX shouldn't exist at all. None of the parallel bus lines are anywhere near crowded, and the parallel subway line could easily have the car lengths and train frequency doubled.
Even the city's own, goosed up business case looks poor. The conversation has shifted from "let's fund this with only property taxes" to "let's fund this with public money because this will never pay for itself."
I have spent a ton of time in LiC and as far as I can tell, there are none. Chelsea where Google is, has more housing projects. Housing projects aren't really an issue, but clearly you are trolling or clueless.
As a trans woman who has lived in Dallas all her life, I agree.
There is a lot I love about Dallas, but with the state government trying to shove bathroom bills down our throats (the only reason it failed last time was because Joe Straus was a hero and sacrificed his career), I can't stay here. I've been considering a move to Las Vegas for some time now, and I'm getting closer to pulling the trigger on it.
I lived in Alabama for a couple years. People are definitely more socially conservative there, and that does lend itself to homophobia. Not everyone who's a social conservative, of course, but it's definitely much more common than with social liberals.
Absolutely. Just a couple years ago, it was decided not to hook up public transit in Atlanta to the new Braves stadium because, in the words of the county commissioner "we don't want to attract a certain crowd". The old white dudes running the show refer to MARTA as Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.
I've also personally seen a friend assaulted with a brick on school grounds, on camera for being gay. The school and police refused to do anything against the assaulter.
I left Atlanta for a reason, and haven't looked back.
EDIT: would love to know why examples of institutional racism and homophobia in the south would be downvoted.
This is laughably untrue. I've lived all over the country, including several years in Nashville, which is pretty "liberal" for the south. And while homophobia and other forms of bias are trending down for the south, it's definitely still the most regressive part of the country.
Toronto wasn't chosen because Toronto wasn't competitive. People that live in Toronto talk about how they're underpaid and how their tech sector pales in comparison to major US cities. Even many Waterloo CS graduates have a "US or bust" type mentality because of the labor market disparities.
Amazon would be foolish to choose a location in Canada due to a their healthcare system and immigration situation. Healthcare isn't that big a deal to a company like Amazon and regardless of the current administration, Americans have never been more supportive of immigration.
Canadians were naive to think they were competitive for an Amazon, and they're wrong if they think Amazon would have chosen them if they weren't so concerned about blowback.
Sometimes, America being welcoming to big businesses has its advantages.
Kinda pointless to open a huge office for recruitment, where virtually all your top talent is trying to get to the US to benefit from far better employment terms and compensation.
As a single location I agree. However, since they picked two, picking Toronto as one of them could've been a good idea.
They can pay much higher than marker rate there to keep local talent and the easier immigration is a big plus.
My guess is that the proximity of NYC and Arlington, VA was a key factor. It's much easier to travel when you can just hop on a train for a few hours.
No, it didn't dodge a bullet, it lost the competition and hence the opportunity. Unless you are a subject matter expert and know exactly how this benefits Toronto (In which case then, I apologize).
By virtue of moving into Toronto, all Canadian cities starting from Pickering/Oshawa all the way down to Hamilton/Waterloo would have seen a boost overtime to real-estate and hence towards economic activity - remember cities like Hamilton and Barrie are struggling to attract highly-educated / high-income residents and this would have given them better odds.
All in all, loss of potential income for the Canadian economy.
I live in Seattle and have lived in Seattle. I know exactly the effects this has, and it's not beneficial except to the already wealthy. Great if you're rich, terrible if you're anything other than rich (hint: most people aren't rich).
It really does feel like Amazon successfully played a lot of municipalities against each other to try and extract the biggest concessions, knowing all along that it didn't make sense to try and hire 50000 people in a decade in any one location.
I know that's how the game is played, but it's still feels a little disingenuous.