(Image source from: Enid News & Eagle)
The e-commerce company Amazon jilted New York City on Valentine’s Day, abandoning plans to build a massive headquarters campus in Queens.
With millions of jobs and a bustling economy, New York can resist the blow, but then experts say the move by the e-commerce giant to leave and take with its 25,000 promised jobs could scare off other companies considering moving to or spreading out in the city, which wants to be seen as the Silicon Valley of the East Coast.
"One of the real risks here is the message we send to companies that want to come to New York and expand to New York," said Julie Samuels, the executive director of industry group Tech: NYC. "We're really playing with fire right now."
In November, Amazon selected Crystal City, Virginia, and New York City as the winners of a secretive, yearlong process in which more than 230 North American cities bid to turn the home of the Seattle-based company's second headquarters.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo heralded the city's selection at the time as the biggest blessing yet to its burgeoning tech economy and underscored that the deal would create billions of dollars for improving schools, transit, and housing.
Opposition came swiftly though, as details started to come out.
Critics complained about public subsidies that were offered to Amazon and chafed at some of the conditions of the deal, such as the company's demand for access to a helipad. Some pleaded for the deal to be renegotiated or scrapped altogether.
"We knew this was going south from the moment it was announced," said Thomas Stringer, a site selection adviser for big companies. "If this was done right, all the elected officials would have been out there touting how great it was. When you didn't see that happen, you knew something was wrong."
Amazon said in a statement Thursday that its commitment to New York City required "positive, collaborative relationships" with state and local officials and that a number of them had "made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward."
-Sowmya Sangam
