Amazon is coming to NYC. AOC says “won’t you look at that...”
After relentless criticism for working to stop the massive subsidies to Amazon (about $3 billion) for building headquarters in Long Island City, they will be renting space in Manhattan. They will rent 335,000 square feet in the Hudson Yards neighborhood on W. 33rd St that will employ about 1,500 people. This transpired less than a year since the fall of the subsidy deal, so obviously, expansion in NYC, one way or another, was in the works.
AOC and other Queens politicians were heavily criticized for fighting against the deal that Gov Cuomo called “the highest rate of return for an economic incentive program the state has ever offered.”
According to the state, Amazon will generate $27.5 billion in state and city revenue over 25 years, a 9:1 ratio of revenue to subsidies—an arrangement Cuomo called “the highest rate of return for an economic incentive program the state has ever offered.” This is predicated on the assumption that after the company begins hiring in 2019, Amazon will create 25,000 jobs over the next decade (with up to 40,000 when all is said and done), with an average salary of $150,000. The state estimates the project will facilitate 1,300 construction jobs and 107,000 in total direct and indirect jobs.
But others disagreed. I suppose they disagreed in two areas: the first being the economic reality of Amazon fulfilling its promises, which they are not bound to do and corporations have changed direction after they received massive subsidies and the economic and social downside to the deal. But what looms large is the principle that a rich, private corporation deserves or needs subsidies and can operate outside the rules required of other, smaller businesses. All the big politicians and the press were quite outraged that the “socialists” have blocked this socialist giveaway to private wealth. The criticism now is that there would be more jobs and more development had a subsidy deal been made. Of course, we may hear in six months that Amazon will be renting another 300,000 unsubsidized square feet.
“The promised job growth and supposed positive impact of Amazon’s expansion to New York don’t outweigh the major infrastructural, housing, and equity challenges it is sure to bring,” they wrote. “A deal created to fund one of the largest mega-projects in New York City’s history without any public process, input, or deliberation not only disempowers the very communities that will be most impacted, but entirely erases their agency and their voices.”
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