Have no fear. NYC can handle the Amazon.
1
The short answer to the question posed in the headline is: Neither. However, Amazon can help revitalize New York by taking measures to close the wealth and income inequality gap that plagues our American financial capital and the nation. Amazon can do this by setting an example for other mega-corporations by equating the interests of all stakeholders affected by the company’s business with those of their primary stakeholders, their shareholders. A few examples follow. This means keeping their commitment to paying their lower-paid workers living wages by restoring the stock awards and monthly bonuses they stripped last month after agreeing to raise their minimum wage to $15 per hour. This means investing in the development of new elementary schools to help the city resolve the Long Island City community’s elementary school overcrowding problem. This means investing in the development of new affordable housing in that community, as well as in a program to subsidize existing units that have become unaffordable. This means making a commitment to hire a percentage of community members for suitable jobs while stressing diversity. This means making a commitment to help improve the functioning of public transportation in the area to deal with the impending increase in people traffic. And this means refusing the one billion dollars in tax incentives the company stands to receive from the state for creating a certain amount of jobs.
1
Queens has been experiencing soaring residential real estate prices for at least the last decade because of the influx of (mostly legal) immigrants. Some rent their homes but many buy. In my neighborhood they are mostly Chinese but we have a noticeable Nepali contingent and many from the subcontinent. The Amazon influx will be a relative drop in the bucket. [I am personally sanguine about the real estate market because I own my condo apartment.]
I am concerned about the site being in the flood plain and with stress on the subway and bus systems that are already over capacity at peak times. To state the obvious but sometimes unacknowledged Queens is on the western edge of an island which by definition means that there are a limited number of bridges and tunnels to get off that island. The proposed site is on its westernmost fringe. There is extensive LIRR rail service from more eastern parts of Long Island but there are few stations in Queens and none near the proposed site. The problems with building at sea level in what is billed as a river but is really harborfront are obvious.
All that said I am hopeful that this will turn out to be a good deal economically. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio in its manufacturing heyday. GM, NCR, Dayton Tire & Rubber and more. Jobs paying middle classs wages count for a lot.
2
@carol goldstein You don't have to be a hodge podge fund manager to buy a house in Dayton. See: honest work if you can get it.
This is not a real thing if you don't live in Long Island City. Amazon will be in Queens.
This will not effect the people of the other 4 boroughs at all, with the exception of the part of Brooklyn closest to their new location which is nice and so housing will go up in price there.
I can assure you NO ONE in Manhattan not directly employed by Amazon will think about it at all, sorry.
25,000 jobs sounds important to a small town but not here if they're not your job — and they won't be. These jobs will be filled by young transplants who will live and work in Queens and leave Amazon within 5 years of being hired.
Since the state has essentially bought these jobs by giving Amazon 2 billion dollars, this whole thing looks like a popularity and vote buying scam on the part of Cuomo.
2
Ruin it for poor people and make it chic for the well to do. Not a good trade=off. Money talks and poor people start leaving for parts unknown. Just ask the people who used to call Harlem and The Grand Concourse home.
Amazon and New York's corrupt politicians will work with each other to their own benefit.
Why does the NYT even print this kind of stuff. As interesting as Amazon's new LIC investment is -- it's not about to either "Revitalize or Ruin" NYC! NYC is a huge diverse place with a long, long history. No single company, no matter how large or publicly known, can either revitalize or ruin this City. NYC has lasted far longer than Amazon and will be around long after Amazon has faded into history. This kind of weak millennial generation hyperbolic "analysis" isn't worth publishing.
2
I wasn't aware that New York City needed to be 'revitalized.'
3
Why would anyone want to both live and work in Long Island City? Seems like a fairly gruesome prospect.
2
I hold with those who favor revitalization. After all, Amazon will perhaps bring more bananas (potassium) to the Big Apple. (Seriously, Amazon hands out free ripe bananas to passersby, Amazonians and non-Amazonians alike, at the Community Banana Stand outside HQ1 in downtown Seattle.)
2
Amazon doesn't have the ability to ruin or revitalize New York City. It won't even be in the top 20 employers in the city. Move on, nothing to see here...
3
I know LIC very well. I worked there in an art studio from 1999 to 2017 after having grown up in Queens. I've seen the area rapidly change from an area that felt like a small, sleepy industrial town where the stores closed down at 6 and rarely opened on the weekends to a glossy metropolis of well off residents. The amazon site sits near old industrial and super-fund sites that have long been neglected. The LIRR station looks like a train station from a developing country. The sidewalks in front of many of the industrial sites are cracked and are rarely shoveled in a snowstorm. With Amazon and all the new construction it feels like we are losing the last of the NYC small towns within the city. I look forward to seeing if the coming of Amazon will improve the infrastructure, but I already lost and miss the small town that was LIC.
3
Why must everything be black and white? Amazon coming to NYC presents both challenges and opportunities. The big question is will NY's politicians and Amazon's leaders rise to the challenge?
Amazon will bring in an influx of revenue via high paying jobs and corporate tax revenues (even after the outrageous subsidies NY is giving). Additionally since HQ2 is located outside of Manhattan, it will likely not be that severe of a drain on the transit system (and remember the MTA is actually concerned about declining ridership).
However, we need to ensure that Amazon is a benefit to the surround community. How about job training for the residents of Queensbridge? What about sponsoring STEM programs at the various elementary and secondary schools in LIC? What about Amazon branded shuttles that operate around the LIC campus picking up not just Amazon employees but all residents? It is not inevitable that Amazon will be either a good or bad thing. It is an opportunity and it's on us to make sure that opportunity benefits ALL of NYC.
3
When I run over the Brooklyn Bridge, I see a lot of young (under 35) semi-affluent tourists. I think, pre-internet, these people would have moved to NYC. Now, I think they are content to just visit. I see hotels going up every day. I recently planned trips to Miami and LA. I was shocked by the abundance of mid to high end hotels. Perhaps, with the internet, the upper middle class chooses to visit megacities rather than to live in them. Before 2000, if you wanted to date in NYC, you had to live in NYC. Now dating is more national, because of internet and apps. For most singletons, dating IS culture. My sense is that NYC does still have a middle class "component," but they are living/staying in hotels for 3-4 days twice a year and living in cheaper areas. Critics say NYC no longer has a middle class, but I see a lot of middle class people walking the Brooklyn Bridge. They live in the SoHo Grand or the Arlo or the Hugo or the Conrad ten days a year.
1
NYC has always been a cultural capital. And a place for the very very wealthy to keep their money. The wealth and the culture could coexist because poor and rich tread the same cracked sidewalks, and rode the same beat-up old subways. The rich have always put up with this arrangement because they understood that a cultural capital is more vital than a money capital, or a tech capital.
Art, performance, music has always been in the nooks and cracks of this city, filling the big ticket venues from time to time, but always existing. But this culture needs space and an equal place to survive, and Amazon just devoured 25,000 plus places for artists to live (not to mention the hundreds who will be fired and find themselves with a NY lease and no income). Amazon just put guard rails up on streets that used to be shared. Amazon has no idea what is means to exist in a cultural capital, and won't be able to teach its new imported employees, because all those priced out artists who make the culture rich will have moved to Philly or LA or Houston or Berlin, and the only culture left in NY will be sponsored by Disney and the big museums.
If Amazon hires employees who know how to make a sax ring in the B'way Lafayette station, there may be hope for the future of NY culture, but I for one, am looking elsewhere for the new cultural capital.
4
Having grown up in Long Island City (Queens Plaza area) in the 70s and 80s, it may have be at times a rough neighborhood, but it was affordable to ordinary working class people.
You could actually have a job in Manhattan and not spend two hours getting there.
Now with the recent influx of hotels and pseudo-posh high rise condos, the area is unaffordable for most... And yet for all the glitzy lobbies and LED festooned facades, the infrastructure seems worse than it was in the 90s.
Haphazard construction abounds and NYC continues to turn a blind eye to things that would never fly a mile away in Manhattan.
Given the track record of how NYC government views and treats the LIC area I'm sure Amazon will be free to do whatever they want, for better or worse.
The LIC area was already following the standard template of gentrification where long time residents were getting taxed and priced out.
Amazon's presence will not significantly change anything for these long time residents of the area, nor likely make it more affordable to new lower income families.
It probably won't drive them out quicker than the inevitable high rise complex or hotels that would have eventually come where Amazon will be, but it won't help.
NYC government will continue to favor it's big money real estate buddies over working class residents as it always has, and eventually LIC will just be a gaudy overpriced mirror image of midtown with crummier roads and less parking.
"the rapid growth in housing prices that has plagued the South Lake Union area of Seattle"
This statement is a little misleading as it diminishes the extent the housing crisis here.
Housing prices in every neighbhorhood in the entire Seattle metro area have been affected.
Because lower- and middle-income individuals and families cannot afford to live in Seattle any longer, housing prices in neighboring areas like Tacoma are now affected as people:
*Get economically evicted from rentals (landlords of old buildings raise the rents extrememly high to get everyone out so the building can be renovated and rented at higher rates)
*Cannot find affordable rentals because older apartment stock is demolished for or converted to luxury condos
*Want to buy a first house or condo but cannot
*Are elderly on fixed income and can no longer afford property taxes on houses they own.
(Sidenote: South Lake Union is a relatively small area mostly comprising new condos and the Amazon campus. It was a generally industrial area with a limited amount of early 20th C. houses and apartments before Amazon moved in. Most of those were demolished to make way for the condos and the campus.)
3
In case you haven't noticed, New York City is already ruined.
2
@Antoine
Yeah, those recent immigrants ruined it.
What were they called....pilgrims, yeah, they ruined it.
It can be better than worse if the city gets tough on Amazon meaning don't give in to them.
Obey what was written in stone with them, but what is not look to get more from them.
They are going no place. The NY metro area has the greatest percentage of IT type professionals than any place outside of Silicon Valley.
While not a corporate welfare give away like was was done in Wisc., with the Chinese firm, nevertheless, the city can get more out of Amazon to help the entire area.
2
Yes Amazon chose New York, but New York has over a million kids in their school system, most of whom are not destined to be superstar coders. So, what does any Mayor of the city propose to do with these children when they graduate high school - if they graduate high school? New York, with all its self-indulgent wealth, was ripe for a resurgence in boutique manufacturing, supplying the needs of its insatiable overclass and furnishing well-paying jobs that could have been filled through apprenticeship programs and on-the-job-training. Bloomberg ensured this will never happen by rezoning the entire swath of manufacturing footage along the East River and doling it out to his vassals in the real estate mafia for luxury towers. Now, manufacturing in the city is corralled into a few Brooklyn theme parks like "Industry City" and the Navy Yard, which more resemble Colonial Williamsburg than Detroit at its zenith. Bloomberg essentially terraformed this whole area so that the Bezos mothership could land. I wouldn't doubt the two were in constant contact during this whole charade.
What politicians like Cuomo, Schumer, Bloomberg and de Blasio have been working towards is a two-caste system of extremely well-off people, whose taxes pay to keep a massive, uneducated underclass at bay through generous social subsidies and nobody left in the middle.
2
As someone who watched the destruction of Seattle's once high quality of life, ushered in by the Amazonification of the city, I wish the existing residents of Queens good luck. $1.5 billion in corporate welfare is a big price to pay-- for being rent-jacked and property-taxed right out of one's own neighborhood.
21
@Wolfgang Rain
Longtime Seattle resident here and I don't agree with your negative outlook. Since the 1970's economic downturn it's mostly been uphill in this part of the Northwest. Amazon was a later arrival to Microsoft and today other tech outposts. What is that all about? The mountains and rivers and water don't disappear. That's "quality of life" stuff, just a little more crowded now.
1
@Bill F. Mountains and rivers don't disappear, they just get trashed by hordes of self-styled pioneers. Affordable housing and work space don't disappear, they just get crowded and taxed out of reach for anyone but the corporate elite. Infrastructure doesn't disappear, it just gets overburdened as a taxpayer subsidy to a corporate newcomer. Money flow is important, but so is managed growth. That did not take place with the invasion of Amazon. It was chaos and (rich) winner take all.
I notice that there are people who are against Amazon building their headquarters in LIC tell us the infrastructure in place will not be able to accommodate all the additional people who will be coming in.
We have a lot of people in NYC but that number has not changed a lot in the last 70 years.
The population in 1950 was almost 8 million.
Over time the city has built in places that had very few people li before and those buildings were taller and therefore the density went up without a decrease in open space and you would expect a increase in population.
The population went down.
The population was just slightly more than 7 million in 1980.
Since then the population has been rising so now it is more than 8 and a half million.
This is very little especially when you take into account the factors that would increase the number of people who can live here.
There are building in LIC under construction now before Amazon made plans to move to there.
The people who will work at Amazon can live in them..
The population isn't being increased more than it would have if Amazon did not move there and the people living there would be closer to their jobs.
There are people complaining that the new construction will be in a flood zone.
If these people really thought that was a issue why didn't they
make this a issue when the building being built now in those places were planned.
I think Amazon coming to LIC is a good thing and the people should stop complaining.
1
This plan would have been incredibly popular with New Yorkers if Cuomo and DeBlasio has obtained an agreement from Bezos to help upgrade the LIC subways and improve/build schools, and maybe even help fund STEAM programs in the public schools. Did our fearless leaders even try to do that? I think people who live in the area already feel as if they living and commuting in overcrowded, dirty, and sometimes dangerous conditions, and our immediate reaction is disbelief at adding tens of thousands of more people to this already dense and fragile situation (with new threats of MTA fare increases for worse service!!). It's just common sense. Seriously, try to ride the G train after ten on weeknight or on the weekend. Be prepared for an odyssey worthy of Homer (the Homer, not Simpson).
I'm a NY'er. These are the kinds of articles that make mid-westerns despise coastal "liberals". NY does not need revitalization. As a matter of fact, it needs to be brought down a peg or two because the only people that can currently afford to live in NYC are the rich and those who earn a low enough wage to be able to get into rent controlled housing. If you're middle class, sorry, you're not wanted.
13
So Amazon is going to be building in a federally designated floodplain? How is this going to work?
How much federal and state money is going to eventually be required to deal with potential flooding?
3
@sanderling1
Not an issue, most Amazon techs have kayaks.
1
As an Arlington VA resident I share your concerns about Amazon. Our situation is pretty close:
l. all our public schools are at capacity; the Crystal City elementary is probably 130% of capacity. The county is going broke building overly expensive new schools and floated a billion dollars already for this and other county infrastructure, and we are at the top limit for more bonds.
2. Metro rail is a disaster--ridership is down from 2009 and dropping as safety and reliability problems rise. Metro needs tens of billions of dollars in investment and can barely handle riders today.
3. Traffic in Crystal City area in rush hour is gridlock; talk to anyone who lives in the area today.
4. Our State and county will give Amazon around $1.5 billion in public funds. If we don't raise taxes, then something needs to be cut somewhere else in the state or other county services.
This Amazon deal is crony capitalism at its worst and a good example of why government should stay away from businesses and let them do their own thing and rise or fall on their own.
6
In a fabulous bit of movie magic, there's a scene in "Citizen Kane", where publisher Kane is outside the offices of his rival paper the Chronicle, admiring a photo of the greatest roster of journalists on the planet. The camera closes in on the photo and suddenly it comes to life, with Kane appearing before the same assembled group in a new photo session. He's bought them all, every single one! No doubt, Citizen Bezos has the same low and justified opinion about our city government, who are now owned completely by the real estate cabal, but are always willing to consider a better offer.
2
In a city of almost nine million residents 25K additions shouldn't really impose a massive impact one way or the other. The real crime is the city and state giving away millions yet still not able to provide decent public transportation or care for their poor. It is criminal that in a city where you can't buy a one bedroom apartment for less than a million dollars, the government cannot provide a workable subway system. There are a whole lot of people not giving their fair share.
5
It will be nice to have another large employer in NYC. There will probably be a relatively slight influx of folks from outside the area, who will be looking to move closer to their work. I do have a problem with giving large tax breaks to companies like Amazon, though. Their headquarters will require city services, and their staff will need housing and transportation, items which require taxes to fund. So already burdened NY taxpayers will be the ones subsidizing billionaire Bezos' business. This problem is not specific to Amazon. Just look how cities around the country subsidize sports stadiums, always a losing proposition, as the promised economic benefits never live up to the hype.
6
"If it recruits engineers from Google or Twitter in Chelsea, or from Facebook near Union Square, that won’t create demand for new apartments, although those engineers might move to shorten their commutes."
Someone help me here. Doesn't that mean that those jobs at Google, Twitter or Facebook will themselves have to be replaced, so somewhere down the line, therefore that WILL create demand for new apartments??
1
@HKGuy Not necessarily. Layoffs and 'offshoring' are rampant so there are plenty of people who will continue to need jobs.
as a long-time New Yorker who has lived in many neighborhoods in this city, state and city politicians need to finally recognize that to continue to keep jamming more and more people into NYC is very risky. The costs needed to keep transit/housing/schools up to par keep rising unacceptably for taxpayers as well as the citizens. not only is the subway in a death spiral but housing and schools are approaching terminal point as well. on the schools front efforts to eliminate gifted programs and make education more equitable can easily push stressed out middle-class people (read whites professionals) who may finally decide it's not worth the incredible struggle to live in this city any longer if their kids can't get decent public education. as far as housing, I lived in Greenpoint/Williamsburg for a long time and saw what happened to the L train and the neighborhood as it turned into SoHo. The same thing is going t happen to the 7 train line neighborhoods and Astoria. after these 2 neighborhoods are gentrified there will be very few affordable neighborhoods left close to the city.
the governor who no longer needs to run for that office should get a clue that the new young generation represented by Ocasio-Lopez is going to prioritize quality of life issues, starting with her own neighborhood in Jackson Heights and the Bronx.
5
@Bart I know it's hard to believe, but much of Manhattan was actually a lot more crowded at the turn of the last century. It's the city's responsibility to attract companies offering good-paying jobs. Otherwise, a city ends up like Detroit, with a dearth of taxpayers to pay for essential services.
4
You forget that these additional people also generate additional tax revenues. Which effective public servants should be able to channel into providing and improving services. Done properly, it becomes a virtuous circle. Certainly preferable to a dying city that’s hemorrhaging jobs.
This of course means those that own property benefit the most and those that don’t have to worry about displacement. But that’s the old gentrification argument: do citizens really deserve the rights of a property owner without ever having to bear the responsibilities ? Sounds ripe for Ocasio the Democratic Socialist to exploit.
8
Given that the Mayor is determined to decimate the Specialized High Schools and not raise the quality of other schools, most Amazon families with children will prefer to live outside of the City in Long Island.
5
@Amy
Do Amazon employees have families? Maybe in 2032.
I am confused....Why does NYC have to spend taxpayer money to make a comfortable place for Amazon to do business? Corporate welfare is a huge scam perpetrated by large rich corporations.
NYC is a fantastic place...with cultural and human resources that are second to none. (I lived in NYC for 45 years)
The correct question is what does Amazon have to offer NYC not what does NYC have to offer Amazon?
12
@Richard Fried
It's not spending money. It's giving a tax break. taht's different. NYC can be said to be spending money, ONLY if it could collect taxes if Amazon does not come. As far as I know, Amazon is not displacing any tax paying companies. If Amazon was chosen over another huge company that offered to pay taxes, your question would be valid.
Let's say you decided to let your friend stay in your other room for no rent, and that nobody had been there (it was just a room with a stairmaster in it). You wouldn't be spending anything to have your fried stay. Let's say you did this, because your friend has a job at a wine importer or is a guy with a lot of hot female friends he might introduce you to. You might get some free wine out it or some dates. NY used that area + tax breaks to try to lure 25000 six-figure residents to NYC in the belief they'd get taxes individually and spend their salary at local shops and bars (helping the LIC economy). That's trickle down economics, I think.
1
Yeah. Trickle down economics has worked wonders over the last 30 years, hasn’t it. That’s sarcasm by the way.
3
@RGT
I don't know. I do think people expect a higher standard of living now than before. Also, a lot of work has gone overseas. I am not sure that disproves the idea of trickle down economics. I sincerely don't know if people are worse off than 40 years ago, or if Americans just expect a bigger piece of the pie than they did 40 years ago. I know that a lot of manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, but that just might mean that trickle down economics works, but on a global scale. We may see trickle down economics working, but in Asia.
My pet theory is that Americans are in similar shape to 50 years ago, but now have knowledge of what the rich have (reality TV). As for health care, people have more health issues now (obesity) than before. I rarely meet non-obese people under 65 who ever need doctor (unless they were born with a condition).
Economics doesn't work in a vacuum.
If we rule out trickle down economics, I want to see the evidence against it. The subprime crash didn't much connect with trickle down. I'm happy to be enlightened. My field is Shakespeare. Not economics.
1
"...high-performing public schools and family-friendly parks, such as TriBeCa, Carroll Gardens and Jackson Heights..." Jackson Heights does not have a single park, it only has a few playgrounds. Please check your sources...
3
@Ilya
I guess this soon to be brand new park doesn't count?
https://jacksonheightspost.com/reconstruction-of-travers-park-is-underway
3
@Ilya And the 20 Internal Gardens that Jackson Heights is famous for, don't count either? That's why people love the area.
3
@Ilya--That had been true for public space, until the development JeffP has noted here. With regard to private space, however, JH is by design one of the greenest neighborhoods in NYC. In fact, it was planned as the first "garden city" community to be built in the United States, early in the twentieth century. The contrast to LIC could not be clearer.
1
As many others have pointed out, NYC is far too dependent on Wall Street economically. Diversifying our job and tax base is a huge win for the city.
Economic inequality is an enormous issue for the city and the country. But more money means the opportunity to add to the affordable housing stock and fix long-ailing problems like the subway.
In the long view, New York becoming a premiere tech city is highly valuable for the future health of the city. It may seem that New York will always be flush and growing, but some of us are old enough to remember when that was hardly the case.
13
Although I'm not thrilled with Amazon's choice to locate HQ2 in Long Island City and the Virginia/DC Suburbs, as there are many other cities for which this would have been transformative, I think it's now a question of local governments making sure that they're getting a good return on their investment. I do not believe that local governments should be able to "pick favorites" and make deals with individual companies rather than passing laws aimed at helping or regulating specific industries, and often these have not turned out to be good investments. NYC/NYS should reconsider the concessions it's offered to Amazon, and should extract additional concessions from Amazon with regard to hiring, housing and schools.
New York is not Seattle or SF, which are tiny cities by comparison. Amazon is not going to overwhelm NYC or LIC even.
There are examples of similar developments in the NYC region. Citicorp at Court Square; Chase, Keyspan and others Metrotech; Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs on the Jersey City waterfront. None of which caused even a whimper. All of which btw are served by subway systems able to move large numbers of people quickly.
Relax folks. Your representatives aided by the liberal tendencies of the NYT are making this another scare about the evils of gentrification. Problem is that NYC has been an ambitious city of opportunity since it’s founding by the Dutch. It’s how we roll here.
12
@GC It's interesting that, in the third pararagraph the authors admit that, overall, this won't be more than a blip on the NYC landscape.
@GC I think you'd have to live in LIC to really understand how it would overwhelm LIC.
I was born on West End Avenue and 68 St - just before the arrival of Lincoln Center and the clearing of our tenement style Italian / Irish and then increasingly Puerto Rican neighborhood for Lincoln Towers. (See West Side Story). So I understand change.
The parallel is that if you occupy valuable, well located and seriously underdeveloped real estate change is inevitable.
3
Amazon is no different than the old Sears and Roebuck. The catalog is just online. Many purchases made on amazon most people would consider unethical, people last black friday made purchases primarily by going to a traditional store to select the product then making a purchase on their cell phone at the brick and mortar store. Amazon was able to achieve its dominance in the market because it avoided sales tax initially, without this advantage it probably would not have the success it has now. So we are seeing nothing new, no real difference between Amazon and the old Sears and
Roebuck.
2
@wayne
"So we are seeing nothing new, no real difference between Amazon and the old Sears and Roebuck."
Beg pardon, why is Sears going under and Amazon is growing like crazy?
Why is it that the process for getting Amazon did not include the NY City Council?
Only the overlords (Governor, Mayor) were involved?
This is democracy? No, this is plutocracy.
4
I agree with both of the authors but I have to highlight one huge inaccuracy. Amazon's Seattle campus is not the least bit self contained like all of the Silicon Valley campuses. This is a really important point. I have a lot of problems with Amazon but the fact they chose to set-up shop in downtown Seattle instead of a far flung suburb, like Microsoft did, has been the catalyst for massive public transit improvements for the city. It's the one good thing about Amazon. I would argue its success to attract talent is also linked to its decision to be located in the middle of a city. NYC should fix its subway system regardless of Amazon but hopefully this will expedite the repairs. Amazon is Seattle' scapegoat to a century of poor urban planning--NYC is much better equipped to handle Amazon.
8
@Fish But there already are at least thousands of reasons (and big companies) to improve the transit in NYC, yet "MTA is working on it", and the service keeps getting worse. The residents of NYC are justifiably skeptical that this time it will be different. But hey, at least the trains heading to the center of Manhattan won't be any more crowded.
@Fish
Right on.
1
Are you joking? Amazon's entry into NYC is interesting, but Google already has a larger footprint. Also, Hudson Yards dwarfs anything that might happen in LIC or the country as a whole.
Despite high taxes, ridiculous cost of living, congestion, poor infrastructure and the worst Mayor I have ever had the misfortune to experience, the City's population continues to grow. The better question is what will be left of true NYC after we finish our transformation into Shanghai?
3
What’s true NY? Seems to me you’d need 1500 pages and not 1500 characters to answer that.
At its heart it’s millions of ambitious, diverse and energetic people operating in a place where commerce is supreme. Has been that way since it’s founding as a Dutch trading post. That’s the lubricant that makes the rest of the place work.
If you’re thinking it’s a place where people relax in cafes and work on projects that no one cares about and that that lifestyle should not be threatened by the arrival of newly minted bankers or tech bros you’re mistaken.
8
All true. I have lived in Manhattan for 30 years. More and more, the major global cities look alike. I am not lamenting the past, as NY in the 70’s and early 80’s was pretty grim. However, gentrification has a price. NY is a magnet for global capital and talent. A benefit for those of us who fit in those boxes.
2
"Revitalize NYC?" I'm assuming this is a historical reprint from the 1970's?
5
The headline poses a question to which the answer, surely, is "neither".
2
It will do neither. But what it will do is to exacerbate the current problems that are caused by crowding without the infrastructure to handle it. And
n-o-b-o-d-y is even talking about it. NYC can't move people efficiently. This past Thursday proved it. And the answers to why were cosmetic not structural. We need more transport options not excuses. I think we need another bridge... this one dedicated to trains across the Hudson.
2
Revitalize NYC? If that's how Amazon or any supporter is trying to 'sell us' on the idea, that was surely a Fail. (I didn't realize that NYC needing 'revitalizing'?)
All the new jobs in the world won't be able to offset the many negatives that will affect hundreds of thousands of NYers by way of accelerated gentrification in LIC, Astoria, Sunnyside, Greenpoint etc. .... higher rents, increased traffic from LIC to the LIE (I heard Amazon will use the old Bulova building along the LIE for a warehouse or something?), more RE development in the Queensboro Plaza area, etc.
NYC doesn't 'need' Amazon. They need us. But many of us decidedly do not want them. They can make all the 'promises' they want, but does any jaded NYer seriously think anyone is going to hold them to those promises, once they are already well-entrenched?? No, people will forget, or become weary, and simply move on.
2
25,000 employees in ten years means the impact of Amazon 2 is a pimple in New York City. We are not Nashville or Raleigh.
With respect to LIC, the vast majority of people living there are well-off and live in the new high-rise rentals. It is assumed that rental rates will go up, but the increases could be offset by more new rental high-rises. The few LIC condo owners are the real lucky ones.
Rental rates should go up in nearby Astoria, where there are lots of rentals available for millennials who want a short subway ride to work and be able to walk restaurants.
Other than that, what? Am I missing something?
5
Coming soon to a deli near you. The JEFF. See: Mayo, white onion, minced garlic, Swiss cheese, whole milk mozzarella, halibut cheek, egg white, cauliflower, tapioca pudding, on Wonder Bread with the crusts trimmed. Add a Red Hook (brew) for that down home Seattle experience.
1
@HLB Engineering
Too funny but halfway true, Wonder Bread is way over the top.
A drop in the bucket!
3
Amazon will neither ruin nor revitalize NYC. It's presence is a tiny drop in a big regional economic bucket. This whole Amazon HQ story is fabricated out of emotions and virtually no factual information. I can't wait until the Times loses interest in it.
8
Amazon did not actually promise a $150,000 average salary in New York. They promised a $150,000 median salary. The distinction is small but important.
A median salary indicates Amazon's hiring strategy is skewed either towards high salaries or low salaries. They haven't said but I'll venture to guess the graph skews towards high salaries. I don't think anyone expects Amazon will invest much money in low wage employees in New York. They'll hire outside services for cleaning and maintenance but New York is looking at mostly wealthy to obscenely wealthy Amazon workers.
The other elephant in the room which no one has addressed is whether Long Island City plans to absorb the existing Amazon location in Manhattan. If you're going to build a skyscraper in LIC, why would you want a separate office on the other side of New York? I haven't heard anyone mention the impact of relocating the existing Amazon employees to LIC. They obviously won't move residence right away. However, they will burden the LIC's local infrastructure. We're talking about 25 thousand plus... what? The same is true for the contract workers. 25 thousand is a low ball estimate for neighborhood impact.
I'm not exactly sure how things will work out but Queens isn't going to like the outcome.
1
@Andy
I'm confused. Are you saying that Amazon offering lots of high-paying jobs is a bad thing?
Because, now I don't know about you, but I prefer the high-paying type to the not-so-high-paying type. I was always under the impression that most people felt the same way. Weird.
As to your "other elephant," who cares? Amazon can rent space wherever they want just like anyone else. Lots of companies have employees scattered all over the place. That's their business, not ours.
And, finally, regarding infrastructure, the subways need a serious overhaul *no matter what*. Amazon has nothing to do with it. The subways need that overhaul because *millions and millions* of people already suffer miserably on the subway every single day, not because a few thousand new Amazon employees may climb on-board over the next ten years. Natural population growth and immigration in this city far outweighs whatever Amazon will contribute.
Remember the $40 billion cost estimate to fix the subways that Byford/Cuomo made a year ago? Amazon's existence in Long Island City doesn't change that figure by one penny. The city needs a massive infrastructure investment regardless of Amazon.
Amazon isn't somehow responsible for decades of government mismanagement and their employees will be a tiny fraction of overall subway ridership. The magnitude of Amazon's move is being ridiculously blown out of proportion.
4
@AGuyInBrooklyn
I think low salaries mean local hiring and high salaries mean importing staff. When a university hires for a professor position, it doesn't look at just local applicants. It casts a wide net to find the best candidate(s). My guess is that, for a high paying Amazon job, a Duke graduate living in NC will stand a better chance than a Baruch graduate living in LIC, which just means it's not guaranteed that locals will get hired over imports. Amazon will probably be willing to pay relocation costs for elite candidates from Chicago and SF. This would not be true of custodial stuff earning 40k. So, it's more likely that locals would be hired over non-locals for lower paying positions.
2
@Andy
A worker earning 75k/yr might spend more on beers and sneakers than a worker earning 200k/yr, who might save up to buy a home and for kids' education. I'm sure this has been modeled. If a city is considering how much salary will get spent locally, my guess is it's better to have 10,000 people earning 80k/yr than to have 2,500 employees earning 320k/yr. People who earn 320k yr often don't spend money on small items (beer, sneakers, lunch, phones). They spend money on big ticket items (homes, German cars, travel, private school education). Their money goes over to real estate owners, BMW dealers in NJ, private schools in Connecticut, and hotels in Aspen, Miami, London, and Paris. My pint is just that richer people often consume fewer (but bigger) items than people earning less. My dad never bought ANYTHING, aside from two homes, a boat, and many trips abroad.
1
Amazon is going to ruin NYC? So 25,000 employees in the largest city in the country, which is already very expensive, is somehow going to ruin New York? Who was to blame for the fact it was expensive before?
This seems like an article looking for something to be concerned about.
12
Sorry, NYers. Amazon's 25K employees will not be remotely visible in overall NYC. Maybe in LIC during lunch hour but other than that nadda.
16
Will Amazon ruin NYC? Get real. NYC eats companies like Amazon for lunch.
5
What is with this obsessing over Amazon? There are about 4 million private sector jobs in NYC according the to NY Dept of Labor (https://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/nyc/). No one will notice 25,000, which is about 0.5% of the total jobs in the city.
3
Trump™ should have given Amazon an incentive to open in Puerto Rico! Silver lining …when Amazon starts killing NYC like the water in Michigan, will people stop supporting it?
1
This article is a little bit misleading. Amazon has impacted housing prices far beyond its immediate South Lake Union neighborhood in Seattle but it also has had plenty of help from other tech companies. It is impossible for those of us making $50k or less to survive in this town as it also impacts such things as food costs.
5
If you want to see into the Amazon crystal ball, take a look at what's happened in Seattle. Not a positive.
Similar to SF turning into a company city (Google, et al), Seattle was transformed into an unaffordable, less diverse city.
Public transportation and roads got clogged. Open air and hidden homelessness is at crisis levels. As if these aren't already problems in NYC. Well it's going to get worse.
4
SF has serious housing issues but is not a company city in the sense of any one company dominating. Google’s HQ btw is in Mountain View not SF. It has a small presence in SF. I don’t believe that any single company dominates the Bay Area.
2
@A. Raymond, So all of those SV companies ( not just Google alone) had no effect on the real estate market in SF?
Those buses used to transport employees daily to SV did not increase rents and change the lack of availability? I beg to differ.
1
You conveniently forget the NIMBY issue in SF, which makes it super difficult to build residential housing of scale. It’s seen as disruptive to SFs unique character.
1
I applaud Amazon-NYC relationship. $48K subsidy per job created is not bad. We spend $10K per recruit to our military (just for signing up). Amazon could have located in less threatening, less expensive environments - but they chose two places that spell severe headaches. Whether it is so intended or not, I am delighted by the political message here.
Amazon says their choice was driven by access to a large pool of tech workers. I love the externalities of the decision.
Tech workers are the future, they are indeed concentrated in big cities, they do value arts and culture, and (I suspect) want their children to go to school in buses that do not drive by lawns with MAGA signs, Trump rallies, and other indicators that the nation is headed to a religious-ethnic-nationalist state where every republican is on welfare, and every immigrant is paying for their existence. Never have American free loaders gotten away with this kind of nihilistic behaviors as have the MAGA. Would red states survive without blue states?
I get that the MAGA set has lived dangerously for two years; they want the benefits of a free society in which they are free to hurt people they do not like. No immigrants rallied to hurt the MAGA set, but the reverse happens each time Trump makes an appearance. Decisions such as Amazon's produce economic consequences for the MAGA set - the likes of which should occur with greater frequency.
I am bullish on Amazon.
4
This is the worst case of buyer's remorse I've seen.
1
First of all, New York was ruined back in September of 2001, when an unspeakable tragedy befell our city and took away our freedom, liberty and everything else that made it great - Mayor Bloomberg was elected.
New York is a sad shell of its former self, filled with obnoxious, entitled cretins who can’t even be bothered to look up from their phones - and those are just the cyclists! All of the good stores are gone, forced out of existence a-la Jimmy McMillan. And everyone has a dog. EVERYONE has a dog.
Anyway, ya can’t sink a ship that’s already been sunk, twas an iceberg what felled Titanic, and a Bloomberg what scuttled New York. #Bloomberg2020
Also, there’s no shortage of vitality in this city, I can hear the bridge and tunnel crowd revitalizing on the sidewalks outside my window every Saturday after a long night of drinking.
In the long run, Amazon's new HQ probably won't make much of a difference at all. A few more snotty overpaid millennials will fade into the scenery like cheetahs in the brush.
8
@Gary Taustine
You are a good writer; I got a good laugh from your post. Just the other day I saw a biker riding without hands; instead, he was texting.
@Gary Taustine
but cheetahs in the brush are still to be feared. a predator you can't see is more of a threat than a predator you can see. is that the point of your simile? id on't think that's what you mean to say.
@Joseph Hanania
Much obliged.
Properly regulated, Amazon could add value to NYC. But of course its not properly regulated and is not likely to be anytime soon. There is the tax thing--they don't pay, they don't collect, they don't like. There is the labour regulation thing--they won't pay a living wage unless there is a sniff of regulatory cordite in the air, they prefer to pay wages that allow their staff to 'feed of the pathetic remnants of the welfare state..e.g. food stamps, etc. There is the monopoly rent strategy which requires them to drive everyone out of independent retail businesses and put their stuff on the monopoly platform.
What on earth else does anyone need to know to understand there will be no benefit to NYC from Amazon. None. Zero.
19
Will Amazon Ruin or Revitalize New York City? No, New York City was ruined decades ago!
1
The development in LIC has always impressed me. Formerly the home of several Circle F electrical component factories and
Swingline Staplers to name but a few, it has transformed in the post industrial era. Many other cities such as Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark, etc., etc., have not done nearly as well. Much of the new construction was in advance of the Amazon announcement. I recently read that 120 condos were sold last week in one location. Most of the new buildings there seem to rentals. I am not at all impressed with the sizes of these units, often only around 850 sq ft for a 2 bedroom that is well over $1 miliion. If you wander up to verdant Flushing, you can find 1150 sq ft units co-ops for under $400k, and almost always get a seat on the subway at Main St. for the 25 min. ride. Of course, Flushing would never appeal to what used to be called yuppies.
2
Amazon's expansion to L.I.C. (and Crystal City, Va.) is a chance for the world's largest online retailer to greatly improve its poor public image with regards to its alleged destruction of the nation's traditional "bricks & mortar" / "mom & pop" shops. If they invest in local schools, public transportation, parks, etc. they can improve their brand while simultaneously strengthening the quality of life of our city. However, if they choose to turn their backs on their new neighbors by creating an insular campus with staff cafeterias, gated recreational space, employee buses, etc. and or ignore their impact on the surrounding infrastructure they will have foolishly forfeited a unique opportunity to elevate the company's standing in the eyes of existing and future customers.
3
@Artie: What leads you to believe Amazon will invest in transportation or parks? Government (meaning you and I) pays for such things. Corporate behemoths feed off the benefits of public infrastructure while demanding tax incentives - meaning they insist on paying less than their fair share. Amazon in particular has cannibalized local businesses across the country in part by dodging local taxes and thereby undercutting local stores that actually pay their share.
1
@Artie
Invest in the local communities? Amazon?
Is the same amazon that sells stuff online?
Have you been watching...?
3
Given that Amazon's business model depends on destroying the small businesses on which urban life depends, and given its history of paying no taxes, it should have to pay through the nose for the privilege of setting up in NYC.
5
New York needs revitalization? Look at all the areas slowly dying in the rust belt? Of course not, we all didn’t have the kind of payola required to entice. Such greed knows no bounds, has no morals and is utterly unethical.
29
@Eva O'Mara
Forward looking people will be abandoning Red states. They offer nothing. No one wants to be associated with racism, bigotry, anti-women's health, school books full of bunk science and history etc.
There will always be plenty of jobs at Walmart.
16
@Mars & Minerva
Unlike New Jersey, which is apparently peopled by only open-minded individuals who would never stoop to stereotyping people and entire regions of the nation.
10
@Eva O'Mara, Actually, speaking as someone who grew up in Dayton, you no longer have the people to entice. I did not retire to Ohio where things are cheaper for a reason.
7
New York City is a beacon for the humanities and social sciences, but not welcoming to nerdy tekkies!
Amazon HQ2 will stress the city's overextended housing and transportation infrastructure, without contributing to the social and cultural life of America's greatest city.
17
@AynRant Look, I'm in agreement that the kind of cultural homogeneity that's taken root in places like San Francisco isn't desirable, but your immediate assumption that "nerdy tekkies" are inherently uninterested in humanities and social sciences implies an unconscious bias you may be expressing without realizing it.
I'm in tech, and am in the "don't crush LIC with Amazon" camp, but I also attend Broadway shows, local parades and festivals, artist installations, dance exhibits. I also work for a non-profit education organization, and am an activist and participant in my local community.
Let's focus on what we're actually concerned with could happen as a result of the new HQ: gentrification, cultural homogenization, and increased stratification due to income inequality (a programmer shouldn't be paid more than a high school teacher is), without categorizing groups of people and potentially alienating allies/accomplices. We should be pressing our officials to either reject the HQ, or if it becomes evident that there is no recourse, to squeeze as many incentives out of Amazon (they can afford it, probably 20 times over) as humanly possible.
5
@AynRant
Long Island City's infrastructure is already overextended.
You should see the area... The high rise, high rent buildings keep going up, but the streets still look like its 1982 with giant potholes, steel plates covering craters and mangled sidewalks everywhere.
The city turns a blind eye for developers creating dangerous situations, but will fine a homeowner (there are still a few private homes in the area) for not sorting trash properly.
Astonishing that Amazon was given the power of doing one or the other.
1
Bringing Amazon to NYC is a brilliant move that will keep NYC at the forefront of evolving technology. Techs at Amazon in LI City will spur more techs and high paying jobs at locations throughout the City. Few things could do more to strengthen NYC's position as America's leading city.
This is such an important success for the City that the cost of the subsidies is almost irrelevant. In a City of over 8.5 million, another 25,000 thousand should not be an overall problem although it will stress the current configuration of LI City. NYC will adapt and manage the problems arising from this growth -- probably not to everyone's satisfaction. Why assume most of the employees will live in LI City at all.? Most will spreading out in many different areas of the City and in the suburbs.
25
@john640 Albert Einstein developed both of his theories of relativity long before he moved to Princeton. You see, technology flows across the world like radioactivity and California smoke.
2
@john640 Exactly. Example - HQ2 is one stop from Grand Central Station, making lower Westchester County very accessible to those who want a suburban lifestyle (yes, there still are people who like trees, backyards, porches and driveways for their cars).
3
@john640. Thank you for injecting a little common sense into the argument. The chance to become one of the nation's leading tech centers in addition to its leading role in finance, the arts, etc. is indeed a major boost for the city.
6
Neither!
The vast majority of New Yorkers won't even notice Amazon's existence unless they're driving on the FDR looking across the East River.
New York City is a huge, vibrant, dynamic city. Amazon will be another nice piece in the puzzle. That's about it.
18
"Will Amazon Ruin or Revitalize New York City?"
Depends on whether Jeff Bezos is just another greedy corporate pirate like Trump or Icahn or is he made of better stuff....
2
@Sad former GOP fan If $B-aires were made of sterner stuff they'd all be named Anonymous.
1
Queens needs to contract with Elon Musk's Boring Company and hollow out the community.. to build shelter for Amazon's new employees. NYC might as well hide its civil defense offices down there, as well. See: "What? Track rabbit for dinner, again?"
2
South Lake Union in Seattle is dominated by Amazon, but it is not a campus. The campus isolation of Apple in Cupertino and Microsoft in Redmond is precisely what Bezos didn’t want.
Let's not go down the road of hoping corporations putt their mitts on schools and subways. For better or worse, the decision has been made and Amazon is comin' to town. If the area's employee-residents don't like the schools and housing and infrastructure, it will be up to them as participants in a democracy to bring about change.
Though you wouldn't know it from all the spittle-licking that DeBlasio and Cuomo just performed, NYC is bigger than Amazon.
12
Birth pangs beat death pangs, sister!
2
@Rhporter You didn't see Rosemary's Baby?
2
Can NYC be ruined.. further? See: frozen in place in a tsunami of humanity.
1
Oh it will change! Look at LA’s Silicon Beach. Amazon is a mail order company that uses the internet- Changes are afoot - notice you can get a $1 credit not to use 2 day delivery? It takes almost 2 weeks for delivery. Signs of an overheated company. So you chose the most expensive real estate in the country and a place plagued by winter storms and summer hurricanes to build on a waterfront with rising oceans! Great business plan until it goes belly up- as warned by the owner himself!!!
7
Either way, Amazon won't be nearly as bad for NYC as De Blasio has been.
22
@New York Completely agree!
Both Cortez and Gillibrand buy office supplies from Amazon Prime, their rhetoric not withstanding.
5
New York City will not notice Amazon. Washington, D.C., on the other hand, will.
11
@KayMe Queens won't be able to tell the difference between the Amazon insurgents and the current mob of Russians.
Seriously? Seattle, with it's population of just over 700,000 can be realistically compared to New York City? Where is this writer living?
It's ridiculous hearing all the comments, warnings, demonstrations, financial projections (in both directions), real estate impact.....over one Company bringing an estimated 25,000 jobs over several years to a city of just under 9 million.
Amazon coming to the city is fine - Long Island City will be fine - any material impact on the city will be minimal - the world's not coming to an end because the Bezos empire is landing in Queens.
NYC has other material, substantive concerns - record deficit, record debt, record unfunded pension liabilities, inability to maintain the MTA, NYCHA and the school system ( over 100 high schools in the city have graduation rates less than 50% - they've declined year over year for the entire deBlasio Administration), failure to resolve funding for new tracks under the Hudson, etc, etc. etc. If you want to worry about something in the future, start with the above.
Amazon is drop in the bucket - can't even move the needle compared to the truly serious issues. Relax - don't worry - your packages from Amazon will arrive on time for the Holidays.
16
I was unaware that NYC needed revitalization. However, building in a flood zone is a pretty stupid thing to do. Promising jobs to thousands of people who don't have the necessary education to even apply for them is cruel.
LIC has a burgeoning new Arts community which will likely be destroyed by this as well. Amazon will get paid by the State, each year, approximately what their employees have paid in State Income Taxes, so tell me again about the great increase in tax revenues for schools and public transport.
I will wait for the $9.00 return on every $1.00 we've paid for this promised by the mayor with bated breath. Not.
8
I’m sure everyone in Queens is looking forward to the next 10 years of endless construction like we have here in Manhattan.
Buy your noise reducing headphones now!
5
I'm happy they're there rather than here.
2
@kwb Amazonias are different than the rest of us. See: The Invaders (TV show); digits at angles.
Amazon will be just one employer among many in NYC. It’s not up to Amazon to correct for the years of mismanagement and poor fiscal policy shown by NYC and the state of New York. The state of NYC infrastructure and schools aren’t the fault of Amazon. It’s also hardly Amazon’s fault that they are getting large tax breaks to make this investment. They don’t have decision rights on tax breaks. That’s the governments job. The New York Times did all it could to make sure Cuomo got re-elected. Everyone already knew that NYC was competing for this investment. Instead of feigning disapproval, the editorial board may as well be a signatory on the proverbial tax break check.
11
Where were all the people who are now raising their voices in protest over the new Amazon facility in Queens during the time Amazon was planning? Why did they wait until the decision was reached?
2
@Daphne philipson If public transport can't get you across Gotham now what's it going to be like five years from now?
1
@HLB Engineering I know that's an issue. but everyone knew this was in discussions for many months or more and the guys complaining now didn't seem to go public in protest. That should have been the time to do it.
1
@Daphne philipson Pittsburgh isn't prepared, either, and they offered the big bid. See: something near $10B.
Does Jenny Schuetz have kids in the NYC public schools? Saying that Amazon employees with school age children will choose neighborhoods with "high-performing public schools" is based on many faulty assumptions, starting with the faulty assumption that your child has automatic access to the closest public school. Nope, doesn't work that way. From K-12, the mayor and the new chancellor do everything possible to provide zero assurances to families about access to neighborhood schools - particularly if the schools are high performing and not diverse. And good luck to amazon employees when they get to the high school process. This deal is stamped with De Blasio's particular brand of hypocrisy and his long forgotten concern about the tale of two cities.
9
Employees with school aged children will live in Long Island, NJ, and CT.......as usual. If you make enough money and have school aged children, why would you live in New York City? That's how the suburbs were created 60 yrs. ago.
2
@Phil If you make enough money you can live in the free fire zone of Malibu, California.
Oh, stop with the hand wringing already. You are the greatest city in the world. I'm assuming the authors are from NYC, but maybe not. In any event, this kind of Nervous Nellie stuff is not what made NYC great in the first place. There have always been changes in NYC and there always will be. Don't get disturbed; get excited. Make some plans and go with it. If not you, somebody with vision and a sense of history and optimism.
46
@Frank
It wouldn't be NYC if everyone wasn't complaining about everything. Even the good stuff is a curse!
It's part of the Big Apple's charm.
8
@Mars & Minerva, The only, and I mean only, exception to that which I can remember is the recent adoption of universal free pre-K.
2
@Frank You don't even live here.
2
Important not to forget that, sadly, a significant amount of housing - from small apartments to huge - in Manhattan is used by the wealthy non-residents as pied a terre or to park their money.
So units keep getting built, and many gobbled up by people who do not live in NYC.
There are also apartments illegally being used for Airbnb and thus no longer available as regular housing.
Amazon will surely force out moderate and low income residents (not NYCHA).
Not to mention the inevitable “requirement” by Amazon staff for 24/7 “service” - food, delivery, services, etc. So low wage workers will be “serving” late at night, and then long commutes home late at night...
The new serf economy.
Young and wealthy lording over everyone else.
The race to the bottom.
26
@LS True! People love to say the solution to the housing crisis is to build more housing, but there's a glut of luxury apartments sitting empty or, like you mentioned, an apartment is off the market because some landlord is waiting for AirBnB dollars to roll in.
NYC needs more regulations in place. We also need a Mayor who actually serves the people and not the real estate developers. We cannot keep building when so many apartments sit empty for these reasons. We also cannot trust the developers to include any decent amount of affordable housing in their plans. That's like asking them to include some green space for the community in their development plans. It will never happen.
5
@LS, There is no affordable housing in the South Lake Union area, in fact there no longer is any in the entire city of Seattle but this is something that New Yorkers are very familiar with.
1
@LS. There are a couple easy fixes. As in Paris, create a non-occupancy tax for those who use NYC as a second home. And stiff fines for landlords and others who use Airbnb illegally and diminish the housing stock could become a cash cow for the city.
This pool of money could be earmarked specifically to create more affordable housing. It won't solve the problem, but it will help.
3
New York City is in need of revitalization? Who knew.
6
A large part of this is the age-old conflict between development and preservation. Since there is no open space left in Manhattan or LIC, the only development is redevelopment, which is generally regarded as a good thing (even by some preservationists) insofar as it replaces dilapidated buildings and infrastructure, provides new tax ratables, and creates new jobs -- while providing affordable housing and recreational facilities for lower income people.
7
New York has already become a big box chain store. Amazon is ironically exactly that. Happy shopping.
19
@Mack King why do I get the feeling that this NJ resident defines NYC very narrowly, i.e., midtown Manhattan. Mack, maybe you should start to explore the rest of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx...these days you can do so by bike. And if the city ever adds a bike lane to the Verrazano Bridge, you can add SI to the list as well. Happy travels.
2
@Mack King why do I get the feeling that this NJ resident defines NYC very narrowly, i.e., midtown Manhattan. Mack, maybe you should start to explore the rest of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx...these days you can even do so by bike. Happy travels.
It's hard to believe that one company can overwhelm a city as large as NY. I don't believe there job numbers. I also wonder how long they will be such a big player. I worked for a computer company, DEC, that just about took over Mass in the 80s, they are gone now.
6
The most powerful point made in the articles is that Amazon cannot wall itself off from the urban fabric that is New York City and therefore while I believe Jeff Bezos will do whatever Jeff Bezos wants as long as it benefits... Jeff Bezos, he may well recognize that it is entirely in his interest to invest in the collective city. And while even Amazon can’t afford to solve the problems of mass transit or affordable housing, it can move the needle in the right direction. Everywhere you look in this city there is vibrant evidence of the good a robber baron did from Morgan to Carnegie to Rockefeller. Perhaps Mr. Bezos’ name will adorn something great soon.
6
Most of the Amazon jobs will be taken by young local minority workers who are currently stuck in the food industry. that upward mobility will be a great thing for New York
1
@Patriot are you sure about that? I have a hard time believing Amazon is going to have “good paying jobs“ for anybody that isn’t computer scientist/engineer. I’m pretty sure they, and the executive teams, are the only people that really make decent money at Amazon. Everybody else subsists on minimal wages.
What I do know, and has been reported in the NYT, is the real estate gold rush has already begun and housing is going to dramatically increase in expense. I don’t see how this benefits the residence of Long Island City.
16
These aren’t warehouse jobs, they’re jobs for programmers, coders and engineers.
4
@Patriot, you do realize this is a corporate headquarters with an average salary of $150,000.00/yr and not a fulfillment center, right?
But maybe some of those stuck in the food service industry will get jobs at Amazon's kitchens.
5
It is unrealistic to think that Amazon with 25,000 jobs will have much of an impact on a city of 8.6 million. It will affect Long Island City by increasing the cost of housing and further stressing an antiquated infrastructure and it may end up creating a net loss of jobs as small competitors are forced out of business as in "the Walmart effect."
6
@Paul Wortman The Amazon HQ2 is a headquarters not a store. If small businesses go under because of Amazon then it would have happened whether or not they invested in this project. This is NYCs chance to keep a little more revenue at home while online sales continue to eat into brick and mortar businesses.
5
Being New York City, Amazon will report losses at the Long Island City facility. That's because items will begin disappearing off the shelves. The Mob will have a field day.
No, Amazon will just have to pay a "security fee" to have it "taken care of". Thats how it works. If they didnt plan on it, then they do not belong in NY.
@Epaminondas and Phil , First, it is not going to be a warehouse but rather a corporate HQ. Second, organized crime in NYC has devolved into a relatively few minor economic sectors. Amazon will have to be careful about building contractors and subs but on the scale they will be working at that is pretty easy to do.
Revitalize? New York City is pretty vital as it is. Building in a flood zone, overwhelming transit and housing, and diverting money from school improvements and transportation infrastructure doesn't feel like revitalization. It feels more like plundering.
62
Amazon is a publicly-held company the goal of which is to earn profits for its shareholders. While I am sure Amazon will try to be a good neighbor, do not expect it to be responsible for improving Long Island City's schools, transportation, housing, infrastructure, etc.; meeting such needs is the responsibility of relevant local, state and federal government entities.
I was startled to read that Amazon is proposing to build in a high-risk, federally-designated flood zone. While there are ways to mitigate such risk the location does seem a bit odd to me.
Given the crowded conditions and poor quality of so many NYC schools, I would expect some of the highest-paid Amazon employees to move to Westchester County, Long Island and even Connecticut to take advantage of those locations' exemplary schools. I would also expect to see an upward spike in applications to private schools in Manhattan.
The much-needed improvements in schools, transportation and housing will take huge sums of money and many years, maybe even a decade, to come about, so you may be sure that Amazon and its employees will do whatever they can to adapt to existing conditions.
As for corporate shuttle buses (and perhaps a staff ferry to and from Manhattan and the new HQ), you can be sure that Amazon already has a team of corporate staff evaluating and planning for those very options.
20
@Ro Ma Agreed; I think a great place to start raising the money to repair the infrastructure is to quit giving away billions of dollars to companies that don’t need it to move in.
7
@Ro Ma, the staff ferries should not be even primarily from Manhattan but from Long Island, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Westchester, and possibly Connecticutt and Staten Island. By the way, we have a number of excellent local schools in Queens. Our striving immigrant families value and support them.
3
Long Island has water and energy issues. Amazon needs to start by installing it own source of renewable energy and have strict policies on water use. We have one aquifer which is rapidly becoming depleted and polluted.
18