12 DECEMBER 12, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
What are we celebrating?
The news that Amazon has agreed
to lease offi ce 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.
EDITORIAL
As some celebrate Amazon’s agreement to lease offi ce space in Manhattan, we remember the missed opportunity
of the failed Long Island City deal. QNS fi le photo
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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