New York City to Amazon: drop dead

[nir]

In Queens, opponents of second HQ say building plans bypass elected officials, will rip off taxpayers and harm neighborhood

 

Politicians and advocates gathered in Queens on Wednesday to denounce a multibillion-dollar plan to bring a new Amazon headquarters to New York. One city councilman called the move “an assault on our democracy”.

 

Rallying across the street from the Long Island City site where Amazon’s new campus is set to rise, opponents called the plan – which will give Amazon nearly $3bn in tax breaks and subsidies from state and city – a ripoff to taxpayers that will stress the neighborhood’s infrastructure while doing little to help local residents.

 

“The more we learn about this deal, the worse it gets,” said state senator Michael Gianaris, who represents the neighborhood. “This is a bad deal, and the state and the city should both be embarrassed to be stand behind this deal. They got taken, plain and simple.”

 

The plan, announced on Tuesday by New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, and New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, will bring 25,000 Amazon workers to 4m square feet of office space on a waterfront Long Island City site, across the East river from Manhattan.

 

The Seattle-based tech company orchestrated a year-long competition between cities around the US, soliciting bids for a location to build a second headquarters. Instead of one new project it ended up announcing two major new offices, one in New York and one in Arlington, Virginia.

 

In return for the jobs, which Amazon says will pay an average of $150,000 a year, the company will get at least $1.5bn in cash subsidies and tax breaks from the state, and another $1.3bn in tax breaks from the city. The mayor and governor say they will come out on top, getting $9 back in revenue for every dollar spent.

 

Critics cast doubt on that claim, noting a different development project that would have produced revenue was planned for the site before Amazon came along. The land in a once-industrial neighborhood is now dotted with warehouses, taxi depots, an outdoor bar and a shuttered restaurant that was at the center of a corruption scandal for the city’s mayor.

 

“Don’t be fooled by the magic numbers that they’re throwing around,” said Gianaris. “This is a bunch of bull.”

 

Lawmakers will never get the chance to vote on the plan, since the state is routing it through an economic development agency controlled by the governor, avoiding city council approval on zoning changes that would normally be required.

 

“This is not only an assault on Long Island City,” said the city councilman Brad Lander, a Brooklyn Democrat. “It’s not only an assault on housing affordability. It’s not only an assault on transit capacity. This is an assault on our democracy.”

 

Amazon has promised in a non-binding agreement to help fund a modest job training program and set aside space for a tech startup incubator. Opponents say much more would be needed to make the deal worthwhile for the city, like help for the area’s delay-plagued subways, sewer systems that often back up, overcrowded schools and scarce affordable housing.

 

On Wednesday, residents at the nearby Queensbridge Houses – the largest public housing project in the US – complained of heat outages, officials said.

 

“Today is a great day to be a real-estate broker in Long Island City,” said Jonathan Westin, head of New York Communities for Change. “Today is a horrible day to be a tenant struggling to make rent.”

 

The city also agreed to facilitate construction of a new helipad on the site for Amazon executives. The Manhattan city councilman Ben Kallos said the arrangement made Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, look like a “Bond villain”.

 

“The governor and the mayor have decided to throw Jeff Bezos almost $3bn in subsidies and tax breaks – and throw in a helipad so he doesn’t have to take the damn 7 train,” said city councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who represents Long Island City. “He wants this helipad so he doesn’t actually really have to spend any time in Queens.”

 

De Blasio defended the deal in a TV interview.

 

“It’s by far the biggest number of new jobs this city has ever seen,” he said on MSNBC. “We want to see the borough of Queens thrive. We want to see people in every neighborhood have opportunities. We want to see people in public housing have chances for jobs, students who go to our public universities have chances for jobs.”

 

The mayor said Amazon asked for more than it got in subsidies. If the company does not come through with the promised jobs, he said, the government could recover the money.

 

“I get very upset when I see something that I think is a giveaway to a corporation,” he said. “We drove a hard bargain. We’re getting a whole lot more tax revenue back than anything the city or state are putting in. We’re getting a number of jobs that’s almost unimaginable …

 

“We’ve made clear to Amazon those jobs need to go to everyday New Yorkers.”

 

Source

[luisam]

15 hours ago, nir said:

Rallying across the street from the Long Island City site where Amazon’s new campus is set to rise, opponents called the plan – which will give Amazon nearly $3bn in tax breaks and subsidies from state and city – a ripoff to taxpayers that will stress the neighborhood’s infrastructure while doing little to help local residents.

 

Why should Amazon get tax breaks and subsides? Makes no logic! Moving Amazon to New York is mainly for THEIR benefit.  And obviously they should improve neighborhood’s infrastructure as part of their inversion, if they really are interested to move to New York! Giving them $3bn in subsidies and tax breaks to "give" them what they actually need is a really stupid way to LOSE all that money

Now, a detail they should consider is that converting the area for developing a housing project, would INCREASE demand on public service, like the use of subway and surface transit, potable water and sewage and of course, educational installations!  And obviously means an increase in job opportunities. So, developing Amazon's headquarters there is a GOOD idea but very incorrectly  and stupidly implemented by city and state authorities!

 

[nir]

Transit riders, drivers brace for influx of Amazon employees

Commuters beware: New York and Washington's clogged streets and creaky subway systems are about to feel more pain as 50,000 more people descend on the two metro areas where Amazon will open new headquarters.

An expansion of that scope in a city such as New York — where the regional subway, bus and commuter lines move more than 8 million people every day — sounds like something a transit system should be able to absorb.

Not so, some experts say.

"Congestion will get worse. Buses will probably get a little bit slower. There are going to be more people traveling at a specific time of day to a specific place," said Eric Guerra, assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. "But at the same time, they will create a lot of jobs where people are."

Long Island City, the New York City neighborhood that will be home to one of the new headquarters, sits across the river from the busy world of midtown Manhattan. The growing neighborhood is crisscrossed by subways and buses and surrounded by residential neighborhoods. The other headquarters will be in the Washington suburb of Arlington in northern Virginia, a part of the country known for its mind-numbing traffic.

Amazon said hiring at the two headquarters will start next year, but it could take a decade or more to build out its offices. Still, the complaining has already begun.

Among the sticking points — Amazon has won the rights to a helipad at its Long Island City location, allowing some senior executives to get through rush hour in style, though the company had to agree to limit landings to 120 per year.

"For the city and state to greenlight a helipad for the wealthiest man in the world and one of the richest corporations in the world is a slap in the face to all New Yorkers, but particularly the people in Queens who have to fight to get on the 7 train in the morning," said City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, a Democrat who represents Long Island City. "And furthermore, if there were 25 to 30,000 Amazon employees in Long Island City, that fight to get onto the train is going to get a lot more intense."

Frustration levels already are high among New York City subway riders. More than a quarter of residents spend more than an hour getting to work, and 57 percent ride public transit to commute, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

A key subway line that runs through Long Island City has been often criticized for delays, though long-awaited upgrades to allow trains to run more frequently are on track to finish as soon as this month, and a new ferry connection to Manhattan opened in August. Still, Van Bramer insisted the area is not sufficiently well served, and there are complaints about noise pollution from helicopters and sea planes.

"The entire city is in a mass transit crisis and nothing that I've seen about this deal makes me think it will help," New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a press conference Wednesday. "Western Queens transit infrastructure is already strained and the 7 train in particular is a mess every morning, so this definitely adds to existing transportation concerns."

New York City commuters have been clamoring for subway improvements for years, and some on Wednesday tweeted photos of packed subway stations near Amazon's proposed new office and reported having let several overcrowded trains go by before they were finally able to squeeze into one.

Some see the dire warnings about New York's transit system as premature.

"Even as stressed as our system is right now, an investment in growth of this magnitude doesn't overwhelm the transportation network because it's such a robust and large system," said Tom Wright, president and CEO of the Regional Plan Association, an urban research and advocacy organization.

Washington, D.C.'s subway system, which will serve Amazon's headquarters in Arlington's Crystal City, is at capacity on many lines and has serious maintenance problems, said Tom Rubin, a transportation consultant based in Oakland, California. Repair work to the subway station closest to Amazon's new office resulted in a disastrous commute last week as people missed flights and stood in long lines for buses that never arrived, said Thomas Cooke, professor of business law at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

In fact, fires have broken out so many times in Washington D.C.'s Metro system that a developer created a Twitter account to automatically tweet suspected fires in stations.

"We have an embarrassing metro system here that I hope will benefit by this relocation," Cooke said, adding that taxpayers will be footing the bill for the transit improvements that Virginia agreed to in its deal with Amazon.

Development along major highways in Northern Virginia and Washington have led to "unreasonable traffic delays on a daily basis" in the past few years, with drive times that used to take 40 minutes ballooning to up to 90 minutes, Cooke said.

In the nation's capital, more than a third of commuters ride public transit and most commuters spend at least a half-hour getting to work, according to the Census Bureau. Commuters in the suburbs surrounding Washington face even longer commute times.

Elsewhere, companies use van pools and private buses to entice talented employees who want to live in hipper neighborhoods away from their offices. Google and Yahoo began running private buses from downtown San Francisco and elsewhere to their headquarters in Silicon Valley more than a decade ago. In the Los Angeles area, Disney, Nickelodeon and Warner Bros. run shuttle buses to carry employees from public transit stations to their Burbank studios, said Keith Millhouse, a transportation consultant and principal at Millhouse Strategies.

Some hoped Amazon would invest in transit upgrades as part of the deal. But it's hard to imagine Amazon volunteering to chip in for transit improvements when so many cities — 238 submitted proposals — were competing for the company's second headquarters, Guerra said.

"If anything, they're getting benefits out of it," Guerra said. "They're unlikely to be paying for new services."

Source

[TheEmpathicEar]

"New York City" is probably playing the "long game". i.e. Get 'em in here and hope for the best?

[Earthnet]

No, not NYC or Arlington!

 

It;s much too crowded, IMHO.

Amazon should create it's new digs in a more suburban area, surrounded by a nice selection of major roads and rail.

 

Amazon only cares about Amazon.

 

FWIW.