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Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 in Two Locations: NY and VA
- intsunny 8y agoWhy would NYS/NYC need to subsidize Amazon in NYC? If NYC is indeed confirmed, then rents for Queens are going to be absolutely fucked. While Astoria is high, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Jackson Heights will likely see never-seen-before rent increases. This would be greatly concerning because Eastern Asians from Flushing are already moving west towards Manhattan and are already encroaching on Hispanic minorities in Elmhurst and Corona. (Source: was native NYCer for 24 years)
- Alex3917 8y agoAnd the folks who bought up all those warehouses in Mott Haven and Port Morris just became billionaires (again).
- traek 8y ago> This would be greatly concerning because Eastern Asians from Flushing are already moving west towards Manhattan and are already encroaching on Hispanic minorities in Elmhurst and Corona. Why is it better for Hispanic people to live in an area than Eastern Asian people?
- dbmikus 8y agoI think the grandparent post is saying that Asians in Flushings are more likely to own their property and then it gets rented out inside the ethnic group moreso than outside the group. So Hispanics etcetera will be squeezed between that and rising prices from HQ2. I don't know how much of these are true, but I've heard anecdotes/stereotypes like this a few times in New York. Just haven't seen (or looked for) any confirmed studies about it.
- sotojuan 8y agoI can't speak for other areas of the country, but NYC native Asian Americans are notoriously obsessed with and very adept at purchasing property. Whether it's pooling money among friends, having very low living costs, or even helping their sons and daughters with a down payment, it's clear it's very important for the culture in a way it's not for other minorities or even white people.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> I can't speak for other areas of the country, but NYC native Asian Americans are notoriously obsessed with and very adept at purchasing property. I can speak for other areas. To a first and second approximation, all Chinese, regardless of what country they live in, believe very strongly in owning property and will go to what you might consider ridiculous lengths to do so. There's a reason the rhetorical enemy of Maoism was the "landlord".
- Gokenstein 8y agoIt’s shorthand for a whole range of economic factors, housing costs, school quality, local politics, etc. Most big US cities have had waves of immigration that concentrate themselves in various neighborhoods ands it takes too long to list out all the features I listed above characteristic to these neighborhoods so people tend to refer to them as “Ukrainian” or “Hispanic” or “Asian” when they mean, “Working class catholic with some gang problems, a very influential Alderman, dealing with school closures due to budget cuts and rising property values without corresponding rising property taxes because many elderly folks on fixed incomes would be fucked... etc etc etc”
- rohit2412 8y ago> Eastern Asians from Flushing are already moving west towards Manhattan and are already encroaching on Hispanic minorities in Elmhurst and Corona. Encroaching is such a strong word. Are they occupying property illegally or are they buying it at market price?
- Gokenstein 8y agoProbably buying it above market price and therein lies the problem
- ilove_banh_mi 8y agoThe purchase price is not above the market. It is the market.
- ilikehurdles 8y agoI agree in principle, but the estimates for my own home on Redfin would beg to differ. The value of my condo at the time I purchased it seems to fluctuate every month. When I bought it I was below Redfin’s estimate by a few thousand, now it says I overpaid by like 30 thousand.
- CydeWeys 8y agoHuh? Estimates are just that, estimates. The market price is what someone is willing to actually pay for it right now. And yes, it's perfectly valid for market price to decrease over time if an area becomes less desirable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ilikehurdles 8y agoJust to be clear, I was referring to the estimate of the property at a certain fixed point in time (my purchase date) changing over time. I do expect current market price to change for my home. I was just saying that these sites will estimate a value that differs and shifts, even estimates of periods during which actual market price is an available data point. March 2017 may look like a great investment when you checked in January 2018, but really bad when you check in October 2018. Anyway, I agree with you that the market is just what people are willing to pay.
- Spooky23 8y agoNYC is always in flux. My old neighborhood in Maspeth and Woodside isn’t Italian, Irish and Polish anymore. I remember the old timers freaking out when Koreans started appearing in the 80s... people are people and life goes on. That’s the cycle of the city.
- untog 8y agoIt hasn't always been the cycle of the city that it continues to get more and more expensive, though. I don't want the city to be taken over by luxury apartment buildings, banks and Starbucks on every corner, but sometimes it feels like it's going that way.
- Spooky23 8y agoThat is all about cheap money and tax policy. Real estate is the dumbest of markets and always booms and busts. No matter what anyone says, eventually the business cycle will swing and everything will crash again. This is especially true of commercial development where things like depreciation and offsetting tax obligations drive profitabilty, but only for the first few years of a buildings existence.
- zaphod12 8y agoThis is really silly...10k highly paid employees is a drop in the bucket in NY. The effect on rents will be negligible. They are absurd and will continue to be absurd, but 10k employees in a metro area of 20 million won't change that. All that said, it's hard enough to compete with Google and Facebook and Spotify for local talent...this will only make it worse.
- vadym909 8y agoGiven that at any time there are only a few hundred or so good houses available in any big city suburb, 10K new highly paid employees looking to get in can overwhelm real estate.
- crazygringo 8y agoI don't know what you're talking about with "houses". This is NYC and LIC we're talking about, we're talking apartments, and the place is chock-full of new high-rises.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoThere aren't going to be 10k people looking for houses all at once. It will take them years to ramp up to 10k employees and many of them will already live in the area and will just be changing jobs. Many of them will also be young and single people who want a small apartment and not a whole house.
- dunpeal 8y agoWhere are you getting the 10K number? 50K will be split evenly between the two HQs. That's 25K per HQ.
- addicted 8y agoAccording to this article, just the Long Island City area of NYC added 9000 apartments last year. https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/home/queens-long-island-city-residential-72253#ath https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/home/queens-long-island... Add in the fact that potentially many people might room, and not everyone who will work there will be from outside the city, and many may want to live in other parts of the city, it looks like absorbing 10k new employees isn’t gonna be much of an issue at all.
- sotojuan 8y agoLong Island itself is going to be affected even more. LI is already expensive, sure, but how many of those tens of thousands of employees will want to buy houses there they can easily commute from? A day of happiness for those owning property along the 7 train and LIRR.
- bradleyjg 8y agoLong Island has almost 3 million people living on it. I think some posters here don’t recognize the sheer scale of the NYC metro area. If they pick LIC for half a headquarters NYC isn’t going to be a company town. They probably won’t even be the largest private employer.
- awad 8y agoThey wouldn't crack the top 15 even if they put all 50k new jobs instead of splitting it. NYC itself is big as is, and the NY Metro area is unparalleled.
- CydeWeys 8y agoLong Island has way more people living on it than that. Queens and Brooklyn alone are 5M. Now add in all the other counties in NY State and it's substantial. You also seem to be confusing Long Island with LIC, which is the downtown neighborhood of Queens.
- bradleyjg 8y agoI was responding to the parent poster who claimed that Long Island prices would be strongly impacted. And when people say Long Island, 99.9% of the time they mean Nassau and Suffolk County, not the physical island.
- nemo44x 8y agoThe 7 train stops at Grand Central so going North is essentially the same.
- dawhizkid 8y agoJust because the campus is located in Queens doesn't necessarily mean all workers will want to live in that area...unlike the Bay Area NYC metro area is fairly well connected by public transportation. It would be just as fast to live in Manhattan and get to Long Island City by subway as it would to get there from other parts of Queens (perhaps even faster). For those unfamiliar, Long Island City is across the East River directly east of Upper East Side in Manhattan.
- unstuckdev 8y ago>> "For those unfamiliar, Long Island City is across the East River directly east of Upper East Side in Manhattan." This doesn't really help if you're not familiar with NYC geography... I had to check Google Maps. It's across the river southeast of all the famous stuff in movies.
- dawhizkid 8y agoFair - I think when people think of Queens they think JFK airport, which is 60-90m away from Manhattan with some traffic. Point is LIC is about as close as Queen gets to Manhattan and Brooklyn, which have traditionally been more desirable boroughs to live in.
- mdellavo 8y agoLIC makes it pretty inaccessible from NJ in a reasonable amount of time.
- JackFr 8y ago> This would be greatly concerning because Eastern Asians from Flushing are already moving west towards Manhattan and are already encroaching on Hispanic minorities in Elmhurst and Corona. Jeez, things haven't been this bad since the Huns forced the Ostrogoths into Lombardy.
- briandear 8y agoWhy is that concerning? Seems to be a pretty racist statement to make.
- philwelch 8y agoAgreed; hearing migration patterns inside a city described as ethnic groups “encroaching” on each others’ territory is pretty uncomfortable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- adrianmonk 8y agoIf true, I wonder if they did this so that their ability to play one city off the other doesn't have to come to a close when they make the announcement. Or ever. Every year or so, you can call them up and say: "Hey NY, we're thinking of expanding in VA, but maybe you could convince us otherwise." "Hey VA, we're thinking of expanding in NY, but maybe you could convince us otherwise."
- dunpeal 8y agoNot my area of expertise, but I would guess all companies with multiple offices do this all the time.
- umanwizard 8y agoWhy would NYC give a shit? Amazon represents a quite small amount of economic activity relative to NYC.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dunpeal 8y agoIt's not even an entire office, just a small project representing a few hundred jobs at most.
- josephmosby 8y agoIt will be far more interesting to see the impacts on Queens versus Crystal City, IMHO. Crystal City already has a strong tech presence - it's government, not industry, but still - no shortage of technology around. 25K new workers is about a second Pentagon in the area, but nothing more than that. Office rental rate pressure will slightly go up, but Amazon's a drop in the bucket compared to federal government buying power for office space. Queens, though, is a dramatic change to the general landscape of that area. I can't even imagine an Amazon-style campus in the middle of Jamaica.
- awad 8y agoAssuming that the campus is in or around LIC proper, there's a lot to work with in the immediate area. Given recent and future development of proper high-rises along the waterfront, plus further re-zoning of formerly industrial areas to the south and into Brooklyn, you could see the long-awaited revitalization of the old shipyards.
- sotojuan 8y agoIt seems the new HQ will be in or near LIC. That is already a super tech-and-finance gentrified and expensive area a station or two away from Manhattan. Not exactly groundbreaking.
- flavor8 8y agoArlington has been running a fairly high office vacancy rate for a long time. Amazon moving in doesn't really require new construction. https://data.arlingtonva.us/dataviews/227253/vacancy-rates/ https://data.arlingtonva.us/dataviews/227253/vacancy-rates/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwaway427 8y agoThe stunning transfer of wealth from technology companies to residential landlords through their employees will continue.
- Alex3917 8y agoDon't forget though that that area in NYC has a ton of both empty space and low-value commercial space that can be torn down and redeveloped. It's also home to one of the biggest transportation deserts in the city, which will be functionally unlocked in the next five years or so once self-driving cars are a thing. While stuff takes time to build, at the end of the day there is a lot more land to build buildings than there are people who want to live there. And unlike in SF, if there is new demand then those buildings will actually get built. edit: Was referring to the LIC location, not VA.
- zzleeper 8y agoVa? I'm quite close to Crystal City and the rent is already pretty high; not SF levels but amongst the highest in the country. Also, Crystal City has two metro lines so not entirely a transportation despert.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jacques_chester 8y ago> It's also home to one of the biggest transportation deserts in the city, which will be functionally unlocked in the next five years or so once self-driving cars are a thing. Self-driving cars don't magically make other cars, self-driving or not, vanish from the roads and they certainly can't match the raw throughput of moving thousands of people in a single train on a dedicated right of way.
- Alex3917 8y ago> Self-driving cars don't magically make other self-driving cars vanish I mean that's what they're supposed to do, if they can all drive one behind another at a constant speed without crashing or creating traffic jams. But more importantly, if you can be doing work while your car is driving itself then your effective commute is zero. And if your car can park itself in the suburbs, then that creates yet more space in the city that can be used to create housing. Self-driving cars, if they actually work, should radically reduce housing costs -- both by making formerly unlivable places suitable for residential buildings, and by freeing up significant amounts of land.
- hooloovoo_zoo 8y agoWhy build two new locations right next to each other?
- wpietri 8y agoPer Google Maps, the locations are a 4- to 5-hour drive apart. That's about the distance from Amsterdam to Frankfurt.
- hooloovoo_zoo 8y agoTrue, but they're also two cities that are 200 miles apart in a country that is 2500+ miles wide.
- hyperpape 8y agoIf you draw a circle centered on Washington DC that includes New York, I believe that circle contains 25% of the people in the US. The land area doesn't really matter that much.
- hooloovoo_zoo 8y agoI'm not sure this hypothetical circle is meaningful, but since I found this cool site I'll point out it's something like 15% (http://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx http://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx).
- hyperpape 8y agoThe point is: there are a ton of people in that area. In the abstract, putting two offices within 250 miles of each other seems silly, but given that it's the densest part of the United States, there's enough population to justify two major offices. Drawing a circle around DC is just a vivid way of illustrating that. It's not totally abstract either: while many people in tech move across the country to the Bay Area, moving a few hours for a job is much more common (you can still drive home to visit relatives, etc). As far as the actual numbers, thanks: your source is better than mine. I think you need to extend it to 250 miles to get Queens and DC in the same circle, at which point it's 18%. I still believe that there's no other area with nearly that density in the US (circles centered on Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, LA or anywhere in Florida are at least 20 million fewer people).
- klaudius 8y agoWhy don't they try remote work? Virtual HQ2? It would be cheaper and give them access to better talent.
- symplee 8y agoWho's going to subsidize that?
- eljimmy 8y agoWhy would you need to subsidize remote workers?
- symplee 8y agoExactly.
- sixstringtheory 8y agoCould they consider the money they save on new office space and feeding and pampering the employees as the subsidization?
- nemo44x 8y agoVermont is starting a program where they will pay you to move there and work for an out of state company remotely. To the companies benefit you can pay employees substantively less outside major cities.
- symplee 8y agoDo you need to have the remote job first? If so, the remote salary would probably have already been calibrated. Still interesting though.
- nemo44x 8y agoI’m not sure. I think they have a set number of grants and you have to come as a new Vermont resident. First come first serve. I think the idea is to attract folks from major Eastern cities that lust for the country side. It is a gorgeous state....but winter.
- unethical_ban 8y agoIt's humorous how willing they are to build HQ2/3 in areas already with high rent and income. They probably have the money and the will to create a new city and public transit system out of a pliable town. Why not do that? It's not so simple and I'm not quite so naive... but it would be interesting if high paying jobs went to places with decent weather and reasonable land prices.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoWhy spend your own dollars when you can consume the infrastructure of other cities without having to pay for it? Property taxes will rise, slowly, as property values increase due to the greater demand in these cities, but not enough (nor fast enough) to offset the infrastructure burden incurred by Amazon.
- iscrewyou 8y agoAnd cities can in turn tax the people. Therefore, actually make your own employees pay for it.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoUnfortunately, you'd be raising taxes on everyone in your taxing district (not against taxes, against poor economic abstractions). It's an indirect subsidy to large corporations like this. I'd prefer a headcount tax on the business; you demand a butt in a seat somewhere, you're paying for the infrastructure to get your employee to that seat. Very similar to CDD fees (one time or annually [paying off bonds]) in the case of residential real estate development.
- closeparen 8y agoWhat’s special about the present moment? Was it improper to subsidize all the other firms operating in those areas? Do 1980 transplants owe 1970 transplants a higher tax rate to offset the undue burden they imposed? Municipalities tend to pursue growth intentionally. Facilitating business activity is often the explicit purpose of an infrastructure investment.
- njarboe 8y agoSo three headquarters? My speculation on why these two cities were chosen would be that they are the two cities that Bezos wants to spend the most time in. Most business headquarter moves to a new city are because the CEO wants to live at the new location [citation needed]. At least in this case people at the old HQ can stay put and Bezos is the largest stockholder in the company, not just the top manager.
- jacques_chester 8y agoBezos is probably very careful about how much time he spends in NYC. Both the State and the City charge income tax based on their definitions residence. They don't mess around, either.
- discodave 8y agoDid you used to frequent r/weightlifting? Moving on.. Bezos has basically no income from Amazon. He owns a bunch of shares, some of which he sells for a capital gain. Amazon doesn't pay dividends. He may have some income from other investments. In his case, the tax man can only come when he sells stock, of which he only sells a ~1 billion USD per year.
- jacques_chester 8y ago> Did you used to frequent r/weightlifting? I did, a long time ago. I became tired of arguing with PED apologists and anyway, injury has driven me out of the sport. > In his case, the tax man can only come when he sells stock, of which he only sells a ~1 billion USD per year. And they will, if he spends enough time here. He'll need to increase his sale to cover the difference.
- discodave 8y ago> injury has driven me out of the sport Me too. > I became tired of arguing with PED apologists It is a tiring debate.
- Nelkins 8y agoWell, if there was any hope of me being able to afford an apartment in NYC in the next few years, that hope is now extinguished. Let the wildly speculative house buying begin!
- bradleyjg 8y ago25k people in nyc, even very well paid, is a drop in the bucket. It’ll have a big impact in LIC. Astoria, Greenpoint, and Sunnyside will also be impacted. But beyond that the effect will fall off rather steeply.
- rajeshpant 8y agoYou are missing a point. every 1 regular job creates 3 non-regular jobs in the market. New businesses like restaurants, coffee shops etc will created which will boost local economy.
- wpietri 8y agoI would like to see the math on that. The proportion seems impossible to me.
- hyperpape 8y agoIt’s debated, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_multiplier_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_multiplier_effect
- bradleyjg 8y agoHave you been to LIC recently? It’s not like it’s bereft of coffee shops right now. Posters are here are making the same posts as they would have made if this article was about Akron. But NYC is not Akron, even if it happens to be NYC across the East River.
- partiallattice 8y agoEven still, that's only 100k jobs. There's already more than 4 million jobs in the city alone. A 2.5% increase in jobs is just not going to change that much. Cyclical employment changes alone are much, much larger than that.
- nataz 8y agoAs someone who owns a home in a beautiful quite neighborhood less than a mile from one of those locations I can’t figue out if I really like this news or it’s terrible. On the downside many things that I like will get worse with the influx of people. On the plus side, my house is probably worth significantly more money as an investment. Maybe I should buy the house for sale down the street...
- jacques_chester 8y agoThe cynic in me suspects that these articles are last-minute PR plants intended to place negotiating pressure on one or both for final concessions.
- nemo44x 8y agoNYC should never negotiate. If you want to be in NYC then pay full price. There’s no shortage of demand here. The benefits of being here are manifold in and of itself.
- austincheney 8y ago> Amazon declined to comment on whether it had made any final decisions. Speculation. Amazon is also talking heavily with Dallas according to CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/tech/amazon-hq2-update/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/tech/amazon-hq2-update/index....
- resters 8y agoVA was chosen for its proximity to regulators. Consider that if Microsoft had put an office in the DC area in the mid 1990s we would all be shopping at some e-commerce behemoth owned by Microsoft. The reality is that for a company like Amazon, regulatory risk is the biggest existential threat to the company's future, and the only way to fight regulatory risk is through extensive lobbying and various legal forms of bribery that involve lots of face time with powerful officials.
- Jtsummers 8y agoAmazon also has a lot of government work these days for DoD and intelligence services with AWS. So I imagine that's another motivator for the location. That area of VA will be a great spot to recruit people with the right clearances and backgrounds.
- _grep_ 8y agoThat's right. Tons of contractors want to build into GovCloud as well, which will be exploding in the near future. They already have tons of data centers in Northern Virginia due to its proximity to ISPs and the federal government.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoThey (data centers) are not in Nova because the government is there, but rather because it has the lowest insurance costs in the Continental US.
- flavor8 8y agoIs that the major factor? I'd thought it was more: * Proximity to low latency backbone connections (originally located there due to government agencies) * Tax incentives by VA * Low risk area for disasters * Cheap power * Available land
- jacques_chester 8y agoYou don't need engineering proximity to hire lobbyists. You need engineering proximity to win contracts on the basis of engineering proximity.
- mabbo 8y agoAs an Amazon employee, I will only believe it when Jeff says it's so. "Sources" that aren't specified or provide any evidence tend to have a poor track record.
- haveupeedtoday 8y agoHave you peed today? And what of the undermensch in the warehouses?
- mey 8y agoNYC, FinTech VA, Defense
- bsvalley 8y agoI hate when people use the word bubble but I think we finally have a real bubble here. Google opening a new campus in San Jose, Amazon in NYC. I mean, how expensive can it be to live in one of these already expensive places? We’re at a breaking point where salaries offered by tech giants aren’t keeping up with the price of real estate. We’re talking engineers, etc. not even able to afford a home. Now if you don’t work for a google or an amazon etc. How do you survive in these places? We need stores, transportation, plumbers, gardners etc. I see a bubble here. It’s gonna get ugly soon.
- dunpeal 8y agoSan Jose is among the most affordable urban locations in California. Tech talent doesn't want to live in the sticks. Especially young tech talent. I understand them because I am one of them. What good is a nice compensation package if I have to live in the middle of nowhere?
- wcfields 8y agoAffordable for whom? [1] Rent is extremely high and so is buying [2] [1] https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/san-jose,ca_rb/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/san-jose,ca_rb/ [2] https://www.zillow.com/homes/San-Jose-CA_rb/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/San-Jose-CA_rb/
- starpilot 8y agoSan Jose is more expensive than LA and close to Boston in rent: http://d3exkutavo4sli.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/zumper-rent-december.png http://d3exkutavo4sli.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017.... Also it really is the blandest area I've ever lived in in California. I don't think there's another city with a higher CoL:QoL ratio.
- dunpeal 8y agoMore expensive than LA? Where exactly in LA? I'd suspect the parts of LA you'd like to live in - Santa Monica, for example - are far more expensive than the livable parts of San Diego.
- shiftoutbox 8y agoDear amazon ; stay the hell out of all of nyc . Go find literally any other city in the country. It will be better for everyone.
- freditup 8y ago> Amazon executives met two weeks ago with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the governor’s Manhattan office, said one of the people briefed on the process, adding that the state had offered potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies > “I am doing everything I can,” Governor Cuomo told reporters when asked Monday about the state’s efforts to lure the company. “We have a great incentive package,” he said. > “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” Governor Cuomo said. “Because it would be a great economic boost.” If these quotes are truly representative of Cuomo's attitude towards Amazon, that's an incredible amount of pandering for the governor of the state containing New York City to be doing. Isn't large amounts of incentives for Amazon essentially a trickle-down economics policy? Interesting to see that Cuomo, ostensibly a progressive, would be for such a thing.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> that's an incredible amount of pandering for the governor of the state containing New York City to be doing Pandering is free. I imagine infrastructure-based incentives will be popular in New York. Large tenants make big infrastructure possible. That enables further density, which means more jobs, more municipal budget and more demand for local commerce. Turning Amazon's HQ2 into the catalyst for building out Western Brooklyn and LIC infrastructure isn't a bad trade for the city. (Tax credits would be tone deaf, but if done in a budget-neutral manner could be okay.) New York City is a commercial centre. Pragmatism wins votes.
- dunpeal 8y agoIndeed. Many people will say dropping a huge Amazon campus in Queens will adversely effect the character of the city, and exacerbate many of its issues. I don't necessarily disagree with them, and if it was up to me, I'd rather Amazon land in Dallas that probably needs the jobs more. However, this will be an objectively good thing for NYC as a center of commerce, and help establish it as a tech hub at a time its local job market isn't doing all too well. Moreover, I doubt Amazon will game the system so excessively that it won't end up paying in taxes and investment and influx of business and salaries much more than it will receive in tax breaks. It's unlikely they'll game the system so badly because it's not wise to screw the municipal authorities that can make your life miserable.
- thwy12321 8y agoCurious what this is going to do to engineering salaries in NYC.
- specialp 8y agoI really hope Cuomo didn't give Amazon huge tax breaks for coming to NY. Frankly Amazon needs NYC more than we need them. NYC is a boom town at the moment with a lot of jobs and skilled professionals moving in. Since 2010 the population has grown by 375k people which is about 40% the population of San Fransisco. There are 20 million people in the NY Metro area, and NYC is a true global city. I know it will be some political coup for Cuomo who has sights on national office bringing Amazon here, but to win the Willy Wonka like contest by giving Amazon a lot of freebies is disapointing.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoUnless he's caught tossing puppies into a wood chipper he will carry the NYC area and it won't matter what the rest of the state thinks. Cumo doesn't need to give anyone tax breaks.
- thebradbain 8y agoCall me skeptical but: two days after a flurry of articles about how NYC, Crystal City, AND Dallas are in late stage negotiations, NYT doesn’t mention Dallas at all? Property developers of earmarked properties in Dallas, per WSJ, have also taken their potential Amazon properties off the market as have developers in Crystal City. Yet NYT makes no mention of such a move in Dallas. Why?
- why_only_15 8y agoThe basis of this article comes from "people familiar with the decision-making process", so probably those people said NYC + Crystal City and not Dallas.
- Blackthorn 8y agoGah, Queens? I was hoping they'd come a bit further upstate (like where IBM is/was in Poughkeepsie).
- dunpeal 8y agoOh, totally. Every young engineer's dream is to live in Poughkeepsie!
- Blackthorn 8y agoI'm a young engineer, I live up there. It's a very pleasant area to live out your life. Not everyone wants the pace of a big city.
- dunpeal 8y agoHow's the dating scene, if you don't mind my asking?
- Blackthorn 8y agoI wouldn't really know. I married my college sweetheart.
- dunpeal 8y agoThen it makes sense. For engineers with families, a quiet little town where you can buy a house and the crime is low sounds pretty good. As a young, single engineer, I won't move there no matter how much they pay me.
- Blackthorn 8y agoI didn't say that the dating scene was bad. I said that I didn't know what it was like. Realistically, it's probably a lot better than Silicon Valley.
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- mtanski 8y agoNot a terrible idea to build two campuses along the Accela line. There probably are other opportunities like this for bigger metro areas along the Accela corridor.
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- mud_dauber 8y agoMy Austin commute thanks you, Mr. Bezos.
- classybull 8y agoI'm torn. In my heart, I absolutely did not want Amazon here due to how it would obliterate any shred of culture we have left, decimate anyone who didn't work in tech, and paralyze the city's traffic completely. On the other hand, as a developer and a home owner, it would have been amazing for my pocket book.
- robertsd247 8y agoDoes anyone think this "search" was even real? I think this was decided long before the "search" was announced.
- arrty88 8y agoNYC and Queens especially doesn't need any more traffic.