Amazon cancels plans for HQ2 in new york

[Crawford]

Amazon Reportedly Eyeing a Return to New York City.

https://commercialobserver.com/2019/...t-makes-sense/

No new info really, just speculation. We'll see.

[chris08876]

Common Silverstien, make it happen!

[chris08876]

At least some more jobs may be coming to NYC. Amazon might lease up to 1 mil-sqft at a Brooklyn logistics facility. Could be the Army Terminal or Industry City. Some options. Latest news via TRD.

[iheartthed]

"New" information about Amazon's decision to drop the LIC project:

A member of the team that led Amazon’s search for the location of its new second headquarters says the company knew that it might encounter some local resistance to its plans to locate part of the project in Long Island City, Queens. But when that opposition proved to be more strident than expected, it helped Amazon resolve a dilemma it had been wrestling with for months: how to hire 50,000 tech workers all at once.

...

Rather than continuing to battle with New York, the company quickly decided to drop its plans to hire 25,000 people there.

Instead, it would focus its efforts on Virginia. Huseman provided CNBC an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the year-long process of choosing a second headquarters, in an interview inside the temporary office space the company has leased in the Crystal City section of Arlington.

The company still plans to limit its hiring in Virginia to 25,000 employees over 10 years. The other 25,000 that had been planned for New York will be spread among the company’s 17 existing tech hubs — a more manageable process.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/amaz...a-for-hq2.html

Sounds to me like they never really planned to hire 50,000 people. The plan was to hire 25,000, in one location, but choosing two sites gave them a hedge in case one fell through.

[chris08876]

Amazon considers We Company’s HQ in New York office search

The We Company may not actually occupy its own global headquarters after all.

The co-working firm has discussed leasing the entire 11-story building at 424 Fifth Avenue to Amazon, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The talks were part of a wider search Amazon is conducting to find office space in New York, the Journal reported. Amazon has also considered leasing portions of the building, though the current state of talks couldn’t be determined. One person familiar with talks told the Journal that Amazon had considered paying more than $110 a square foot for the space.

After a series of delays, the We Company closed on the historic Lord & Taylor building in February for $850 million. It quickly tapped its chief architect Bjarke Ingels to preserve and renovate the roughly 600,000-square-foot landmarked building. According to the design he submitted, the lower floors were to remain retail spaces while the upper floors would be occupied by the We Company.

The Journal report comes just months after the technology giant famously abandoned a plan to spend $2.5 billion on a new headquarters in Long Island City. Amazon has said it will continue to expand in New York City, where it has 5,000 employees. In June, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spent $80 million on three units at 212 Fifth Avenue.

In addition to the Fifth Avenue building, Amazon has reportedly considered other office sites across the city, including the Farley Post Office.

========='
1. TRD
2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons...ng-11564074887

[whatnext]

Sad. So it turns out the whole HQ2 sideshow was a result of Bezos' subsidy envy. Remond me again why governments think they need to throw tax breaks at billionaires?

Behind Amazon’s HQ2 Fiasco: Jeff Bezos Was Jealous of Elon Musk
Determined to meet Bezos’s demand for Tesla-size government handouts, the HQ2 team became victims of their own hubris.

When Elon Musk secured $1.3 billion from Nevada in 2014 to open a gigantic battery plant, Jeff Bezos noticed. In meetings, the Amazon.com Inc. chief expressed envy for how Musk had pitted five Western states against one another in a bidding war for thousands of manufacturing jobs; he wondered why Amazon was okay with accepting comparatively trifling incentives. It was a theme Bezos returned to often, according to four people privy to his thinking. Then in 2017, an Amazon executive sent around a congratulatory email lauding his team for landing $40 million in government incentives to build a $1.5 billion air hub near Cincinnati. The paltry sum irked Bezos, the people say, and made him even more determined to try something new.

And so, when Amazon launched a bakeoff for a second headquarters in September 2017, the company made plain that it was looking for government handouts in exchange for a pledge to invest $5 billion and hire 50,000 people. The splashy reality-television-style contest generated breathless media coverage, attracted fawning bids from 238 cities across North America and ended with Amazon deciding to split the so-called HQ2 between New York and Virginia. Then progressive politicians attacked the $3 billion in incentives offered by New York, and Bezos pulled out.

Amazon was widely ridiculed for its failure to court New York politicians. To understand why that happened, Bloomberg interviewed 12 people familiar with Amazon’s effort. Their story, outlined here for the first time, depicts a team that became the victim of its own hubris. Bezos’s frustration with what he deemed meager government largess prompted executives to scrap lessons learned through the years in favor of an unapologetic appeal for tax breaks and other incentives....

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...y-of-elon-musk

[dimondpark]

I read that last night. What a revelation

I knew it was fixed all along. Those poor cities that they strung along for months. What a prick.

[iheartthed]

^Reading that kind of makes me want to cancel my Prime membership.

[suburbanite]

It honestly probably would've worked if after the first round they had just selected one of the ~5 cities they always knew was going to win and went full steam ahead.

Announcing the second round with the shortlist of cities in an obvious play to see who would toss in a few extra billion of incentives was when shit hit the fan.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

It honestly probably would've worked if after the first round they had just selected one of the ~5 cities they always knew was going to win and went full steam ahead.

Announcing the second round with the shortlist of cities in an obvious play to see who would toss in a few extra billion of incentives was when shit hit the fan.

It actually did work, but was mostly limited to screwing Virginia taxpayers.

If any good came out of this circus, it is that the end of this corporate subsidy game is in sight.

[suburbanite]

Well if they really wanted Long Island City and the original incentive plan then it didn't work as well as it could have.

The PR damage is priceless as well. This whole fiasco coincided with Bezos's rise to public enemy number 1 at the top of the progressive left's shitlist. He's practically in Hollywood evil villain territory in a way that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, or any other of the previous faces of corporate America never were.

[Steely Dan]

what a small-dicked dick.

fuck that douche bag.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Well if they really wanted Long Island City and the original incentive plan then it didn't work as well as it could have.

It doesn't seem entirely clear that they wanted the LIC location and the Arlington location, or they wanted the LIC location OR the Arlington location. If it's the latter, then it worked.

Originally Posted by suburbanite

The PR damage is priceless as well. This whole fiasco coincided with Bezos's rise to public enemy number 1 at the top of the progressive left's shitlist. He's practically in Hollywood evil villain territory in a way that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, or any other of the previous faces of corporate America never were.

Bill Gates has done a lot to repair his image since the early 2000s, but I think perception of him in the late 90s was worse than Bezos's... even though I think Bezos's conduct is worse than Gates's. I don't think Steve Jobs or Warren Buffet have ever achieved chief corporate villain status like Gates and Bezos. Anti-Microsoft backlash gave Apple an opening to rebound in the late 90s.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

^Reading that kind of makes me want to cancel my Prime membership.

Me too.

[jtown,man]

Yeah, remember Microsoft was about to be "broken up" because of its monopoly? Man, politicians are shortsighted. Anyways, Bezo is a douche for sure. I ONLY shop on Amazon when I buy books. Otherwise, I try not to even click on that website.

[The North One]

So AOC was obviously correct and saved New Yorker's billions of dollars.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by The North One

So AOC was obviously correct and saved New Yorker's billions of dollars.

In the long run, would they have actually lost money in this transaction with all things included in the equation?

[10023]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Yeah, remember Microsoft was about to be "broken up" because of its monopoly? Man, politicians are shortsighted. Anyways, Bezo is a douche for sure. I ONLY shop on Amazon when I buy books. Otherwise, I try not to even click on that website.

The Justice Department’s crusade to break up AT&T decades ago is the reason the US now lacks a major telecoms equipment company, and Huawei has the world by the balls.

[Handro]

Originally Posted by The North One

So AOC was obviously correct and saved New Yorker's billions of dollars.

Imagine that

[Qubert]

Originally Posted by The North One

So AOC was obviously correct and saved New Yorker's billions of dollars.

No, because you can't have a tax break on money that doesn't exist. The 3B in tax breaks is off an anticipated 30B in taxes paid.

HQ2:

30B
-3B
=27B to NYS/NYC

AOC:

30B
-"Fudge Off"
=0 to NYS/NYC