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TIMESLEDGER | Q 16 NS.COM | DEC. 13-19, 2019
READERS WRITE
It looks like there’s going to
possibly be a change in ownership
of the New York Mets
with Steve Cohen negotiating
a deal with the Wilpons.
The deal would be worth $2.6
billion and Cohen would buy
80 percent of the team, which
would end, over a five-year
period, Fred and Jeff Wilpon’s
reign over the team.
Their ownership of the team
has produced a number of losing
years and they have disappointed
fans, including myself,
time after time.
I have been a die-hard Mets
fan since 1963 with my father,
who was a Dodgers fan and
started rooting for the Mets
when the Dodgers moved to
Los Angeles. We both remained
dedicated Mets fans, through
the good years and the bad. My
father remained a Mets fan until
the day he passed away in
1973.
I have felt the Mets could
have done better and produced
another World Series championship,
so for that, I would like
to praise Steve Cohen for stepping
up to the plate and wanting
to produce a winning team.
LET’S GO METS!
Frederick R. Bedell Jr.,
Glen Oaks Village
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A new era for the New York Mets
The news that Amazon has agreed to lease office
space in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards for more
than 1,500 employees stirred up some ghosts
along Anable Basin on the Long Island City waterfront.
Amazon had planned to build its massive
HQ2 campus in Long Island City and promised
to bring 25,000 jobs over the next 10 years, until
facing fierce opposition from elected officials,
who said offering $3 billion in tax incentives was
feeding corporate greed. A significant coalition
of community groups concerned with gentrification,
technical support for ICE, and anti-union
policies led the e-commerce giant to scrap the
plan last February.
“Amazon is coming to New York just as they
planned,” state Senator Michael Gianaris said.
“Fortunately, we dodged a $3 billion bullet by not
agreeing to their subsidy shakedown earlier this
year.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
joined in the victory lap with a frivolous post on
Twitter.
But 1,500 jobs in Manhattan do not equate to
the 25,000 jobs promised and lost in the failed Amazon
LIC deal. Crunch the numbers every which
way, and 1,500 will never be equal to 25,000. It’s
simple math.
So we fail to understand, as Governor Andrew
Cuomo does, the victory lap over the Manhattan
Amazon deal. Cuomo, the main broker of the HQ2
deal chastised the opponents of the HQ2 plan in a
recent AP interview.
“This is crumbs from the table compared to
a feast,” Cuomo said. “We don’t have a problem
bringing businesses to Manhattan but we have
been trying for decades to get that Queens waterfront
developed.”
The lease Amazon inked at Hudson Yards is
for existing office space, not the HQ2 campus that
would have created more than 10,000 union construction
jobs.
So Amazon has come in, without getting a taxpayer
dime, and decided to create 1,500 jobs in
Manhattan. That’s nice.
That doesn’t, however, make up for the lost
promise on the Long Island City waterfront. It
could have been something, instead it got a bum
rap from politicians who couldn’t see the forest
from the trees.
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