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Big technology companies are doubling down on New York City
- Apocryphon 7y agoFurther underscores how much of an immense scam the HQ2 sweepstakes / city talent show was. It should always be brought up the next time a company, sports franchise, or other organization tries to get sweetheart deals to build somewhere. Amazon should be forced to wear this millstone around its neck every time it tries to extort a community for land.
- rolltiide 7y agoDoes it? Amazon chose NYC because it wanted to be in NYC. The whole point was to show what the movers and shakers actually think of Middle America and every culturally irrelevant place on this continent. It succeeded. Were any of those places whoring for yield ever in the running? No.
- dba7dba 7y agoBut amazon DID go around announcing plans for HQ2 and making a big deal about it, to get tax breaks etc.
- javagram 7y agoAs far as Amazon’s DC metro area location I don’t see why amazon wouldn’t have considered locating in the DC or MD parts of the region if the incentives and pitch were right. Making the three jurisdictions bid against each other seems like a reasonable strategy even if there was a secret plan to end up somewhere in the region in the end.
- rayiner 7y agoBut they ended up in the place that offered the least incentives.
- rolltiide 7y agoBecause thats where they wanted to be. Its not that confusing. Amazon was playing Tag the Sponsor to reveal all the municipal whores for fun.
- javagram 7y agoThe incentives that MD or DC offered probably weren’t enough to make up for the deficiencies of the areas. I’m not sure about DC but it seems like businesses are frequently choosing to locate in NoVA rather than MD. https://www.bisnow.com/washington-dc/news/neighborhood/cameron-pratt-on-why-montgomery-county-has-fallen-behind-northern-virginia-99668?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser#ath https://www.bisnow.com/washington-dc/news/neighborhood/camer...
- TulliusCicero 7y agoThe things Amazon wants and needs -- particularly, desirability by young, affluent techies -- don't really exist in "middle America". For example, public transit. Only a handful of US cities have decent public transit at all, probably the only cheap city in that group is Philly. You're not gonna find good transit in Cleveland or Phoenix or Nashville, because they've chosen not to seriously invest in it. Is that Amazon's fault somehow?
- ok_coo 7y agoChicago has decent public transportation and plenty of young, affluent techies. It's not SV or NYC but it fits the bill for a midwest city. Chicago, and IL, have plenty of issues to work through though so I get why they didn't want to setup a HQ there.
- whb07 7y agoChicago has a doomsday clock that keeps ticking down with its pensions and the state's pensions. Those governments might start raising the taxes more and more and fall into a tighter death spiral as it pushes people away, leading to less revenue.
- keenmaster 7y agoThe pension explanation doesn't make sense. Chicago would gladly offer tax breaks to any company opening a major HQ here, as it has in the past. It's had a streak of being business friendly. I also don't get the "violence" explanation. Violence is terrible and everyone in Chicago wants to end it, but the average person is far removed from any shootings.
- whb07 7y agoCan't exactly guarantee offer tax breaks if they are short on tax revenue, and while every government federal/local is always short Chicago/Illinois is deathly short. The tax increases have already begun and there have been weird talks coming out of the Chicago mayor's office essentially asking for a tax on the rest of the state to help out Chicago proper.
- remarkEon 7y agoIt acted as a kind of ruse to get these places to signal how far they would go to be “connected” to the tech world that they, rightly or wrongly, feel is leaving them behind. I tend to agree that what Amazon did was pretty cheap and low class, though.
- rolltiide 7y agoyeah it was a cheap shot and hilarious, all of us "coastal elites" were scratching our heads during the whole charade looking at each city in the running wondering how the likes of Little Rock Arkansas, Nashville Tennessee, Pittsburg, Columbus etc would ever be desirable places, let alone if any of us would run the risk of being sent to one of those doldrums if we worked for Amazon, all for the conclusion to revert to the norm of coastal elite decision makers at Amazon echoing our preexisting sentiment because they are one of us after all trolling level: phenomenal
- blakesterz 7y ago“A company like Facebook and others are expanding because they are running out of talent in Silicon Valley and San Francisco,” said Paul Leonard, a managing consultant at CoStar. Honest question... is that really true? It reads like hyperbole or certainly an over simplification.
- fred_is_fred 7y agoI guess they looked at a map and picked the most expensive US city they could find then?
- nradov 7y agoTalent is a myth. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myt... Labor costs are high and growing in the SF Bay Area but there are many other areas that would work just fine for a tech company HQ.
- coolio2657 7y agoWhile the article you reference is quite good, if I do say so, as it points out many aspects of how people 'exude' superiority more than they actually are 'superior', or 'more talented' than others, straight up saying that "Talent is a myth" is none-sense. Your view should be more nuanced.
- kcorbitt 7y agoFacebook already pays its median employee $240k (https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Yes-median-pay-at-Facebook-really-is-about-12870786.php?psid=c7FIe https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Yes-me...). You can assume that at those salaries, they've already hired a large percentage of the Bay Area software engineers who meet their bar and are willing to work at Facebook. So if they want to hire another, say, 5k engineers, they either have to somehow convince 5k people to move to the Bay Area or expand in satellite offices. Word on the street from local recruiters is that you can still get new grads to move to the Bay Area (for a few years at least), but it has become nearly impossible to get senior talent to move in because of cost of living and quality of life issues. So depending on the type of engineer they're looking for, yes, they may be effectively forced to expand in other locations.
- prions 7y agoThe article misses the point that a big part of Amazon's HQ2 was building new offices in an industrial area of LIC and not using existing real estate Manhattan.
- davidwitt415 7y agoNew York City is comprised of the five boroughs, not just Manhattan.
- prions 7y agoAnd? All of the companies listed in the article are expanding in Manhattan, including Amazon. "Many of these companies are willing to spend big dollars renting high-end Manhattan real estate, rather than the older office stock in Queens that Amazon was prepared to lease."
- rolltiide 7y agoTrue, but one could argue that several east river neighborhoods are just extensions of the Manhattan density and culture, with the perk of having an actual view of Manhattan. I get that some people want their own borough's identity, but LIC doesn't really represent that.
- wpasc 7y agoNo borough identity is truly intact. Brooklyn of today bears little to no resemblance of what it used to. Similar gentrification is happening in queens and to a lesser extent the Bronx. Staten Island? yeah it's identity has the best chance of staying intact
- jazzkingrt 7y agoManhattan can build higher to meet office space demand.
- bobthepanda 7y agoLIC is already gentrifying extremely rapidly. There are high-rise apartment blocks sprouting like weeds, it’s not going to be industrial much longer. If anything it’s a poor place to put jobs, because unless you live in Queens itself the transport links are extremely poor.
- commonsense1234 7y agoare there other instances in history were local governments have successfully driven out or not fallen for giant corporates?
- fred_is_fred 7y agoThe State of WV for most of the early 20th century was run by coal barons.
- javagram 7y ago“Many of these companies are willing to spend big dollars renting high-end Manhattan real estate, rather than the older office stock in Queens that Amazon was prepared to lease.” In other words, development in Queens/LIC isn’t attractive and needed government subsidies to make Amazon consider going there. In general it seems like tech companies are willing to pay top dollar for locations in the most expensive areas like SF and manhattan rather than try to find cheaper areas.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoThe most expensive areas tend to be more "central"/have better access by public transit.
- walshemj 7y agoWhich is why Google has offices in Kings cross London very central for rail terminuses
- betterunix2 7y agoLIC is served by 5 subway lines, a commuter rail line with two stations in the area (and a third in progress to serve a new commuter rail connection to Manhattan), a ferry, and multiple bus lines, with various connections between them all. It is one of the best served neighborhoods as far as transit goes, even compared to Manhattan.
- jacques_chester 7y agoAnd if you want to get there from neighbouring Brooklyn, by itself containing 2.6 million people, you will probably have to go through Manhattan anyway.
- betterunix2 7y agoActually the 'G' train, which only serves Brooklyn and Queens, terminates in LIC at one of the major transfer stations (where one can connect to the 'E', 'M', or '7' trains).