To facilitate the necessary rezoning for the project, the state will make use of a General Project Plan (GPP), which was used in recent years to advance the Javits Center expansion, Atlantic Yards, and Moynihan Station. But rather than going through the city’s extensive land use review process, known as ULURP, the state will take the lead and override local regulations on the lot, currently zoned for manufacturing space. What is Amazon getting?Īmazon will build a campus of at least 4 million square feet near the Anable Basin on the East River waterfront, on a site that’s partially owned by Plaxall Realty and partially owned by the city. There are plenty of moving parts to this story, and it’s only going to get more complicated as it barrels toward being finalized-here’s what you need to know. And de Blasio, who has strayed from his prior rhetoric on corporate subsidies, was intimately involved in bringing what many regard as overly generous corporate subsidies to an employer with a suspect (at best) record on labor. “We measure success in how many everyday people benefit.” (It also made the case even stronger, he said, for his pet transit projects: Brooklyn-Queens streetcar and recent ferry expansion.)īut for the project’s critics, the opacity of the deal-which Cuomo hammered out with Amazon execs-reinforced the governor’s my-way-or-the-highway attitude, as well as his willingness to throw money at often ineffective economic development initiatives.
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“In the public sector, we don’t measure success in corporate profits,” he said. He called the deal an “astounding return on investment” that would create “literally an unprecedented number of jobs” that “blows away anything we’ve ever seen.” (He was also sure to note the proposed HQ2 location’s proximity to new infrastructure projects like Penn Station and the LaGuardia AirTrain.)įor de Blasio, who ran for mayor in 2013 on a tale-of-two-cities message, the deal was in keeping with two of his main goals: his vision of making New York a five-borough city, not solely reliant on Manhattan, and creating high-paying jobs in the tech sector, which he says will benefit average New Yorkers. “This is the largest economic development initiative that has ever been done by the city or the state or the city and the state, together,” the governor said during the press conference. Andrew Cuomo gathered with other city and state officials to gleefully announce that they had sealed the deal, which includes just shy of $3 billion in subsidies.Ĭuomo, the legacy-focused executive who prides himself on cutting deals and incentivizing private sector growth and job creation, was clearly delighted by the decision.
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Update: On February 14, Amazon reportedly canceled its HQ2 deal with New York City.Īmazon’s HQ2 search is officially over: The company confirmed via a blog post that Long Island City and Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, were the locations chosen for its new, split-up headquarters.Īfter the decision was made public, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov.