Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters
blog.aboutamazon.com
blog.aboutamazon.com
It really does feel like Amazon successfully played a lot of municipalities against each other to try and extract the biggest concessions, knowing all along that it didn't make sense to try and hire 50000 people in a decade in any one location.
I know that's how the game is played, but it's still feels a little disingenuous.
They could be divisional HQs, as in Alexa HQ'd in NYC and AWS in DC.
How?
Note the geographically oriented split.
Also, the whole point of the new offices is to aid recruitment. Limiting particular offices to just one skillset goes totally against that.
No, these offices will be smaller than the Seattle HQ, but at half the size, you can expect them to be quite diverse.
They will not be a "single project" office.
Clearing your throat in preparation, you reach for the first sheet of paper and begin to read the list of words:
"Alacksah... Alicksah... Alorksah... Alucksah"
You think to yourself: for $15/hour, you've had worse jobs.
Not quite.
Amazon has satellite offices, that employ an order of magnitude fewer employees.
At 25k/branch, the term "regional headquarters" can be considered justified.
They did game the system though. Feels like they negotiated tax benefits with 50k employees in mind, and kept the same benefits while only giving locations 25k each.
This is good for tech in the east coast. Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.
Cornell tech much be so happy with their choice to open office on Roosevelt island. I can see them being the biggest winners out of this whole set of events. NYU is probably also happy, having acquired NYU poly a few years ago.
Those fin-tech companies almost certainly pay more than Amazon already. IIRC amazon has a cap of 275k for base pay, which means even if you're James Gosling that's the most you're getting, the rest has to come from RSUs which amazon also has a terrible vesting structure for. Amazon is regarded as a top-tier tech company, but their pay is not on par with any of the other companies (Google, FB, Uber, etc).
More tech presence is good, but I don't think big name companies are going to be too worried about their employees leaving to get paid less and have fewer benefits.
The reason top tech generally kept out of NYC until recently is that they had trouble competing against investment bank salaries.
This only changed as top tech (especially FAANG) comp increased to catch up.
The less charitable interpretation is that top tech found itself compelled to pay more and more due to the talent crunch, until after all the increases it finally caught up with average NYC pay. Now, since it already pays at NYC-competitive levels, it might as well open offices in NYC and enjoy the talent pool there.
Can you expound on this?
Sure, Google and FB pay more and so do top investment banks / hedge funds in math/stat/algo positions . However, those simply are not the bulk of fintech employees.
The majority of fintech SDEs at GS,Morgan,etc. are working on software engineering and maintenance work. These roles pay closer to the $100k number than Amazon's quoted $150k. At least for new hires.
My Amazon comp has been more than competitive with FB, Uber, Google.
[Disclaimer/Source: work at Amazon]
If that's what happened, that's poor negotiation by the cities. If they made an offer based on employee counts, they could have required employee targets in return for the benefits being offered.
And if Amazon refuses to make firm employee count guarantees in return for the benefits being offered, then that's a pretty strong signal that you shouldn't rely on their promises.
So creating half the jobs results in half the tax benefits.
If you have your politicians pitching the public on this huge 50k jobs deal, then they’re going to accept fewer jobs in the end rather than lose out altogether. Once a city commits itself to being in the Amazon race, losing is a huge political liability. Cities lose all leverage.
Amazon will represent a tiny portion of NYC's tech industry. Just a drop in the bucket. It won't move the dial much. Also fin-tech firms already compete with tech companies and they pay very well ( better than amazon ).
> Cornell tech much be so happy with their choice to open office on Roosevelt island. I can see them being the biggest winners out of this whole set of events. NYU is probably also happy, having acquired NYU poly a few years ago.
Neither cornell nor NYU needs amazon. It won't make a difference. The biggest winner will be amazon as they gain more political influence. That's what this move is about after all. Political influence in the two most important political centers of the US and the world.
I think you have that backwards. When I worked for Netflix I got an offer from a fin-tech firm that was double my already top of market Netflix salary. I chose to stay at Netflix because the fin-tech work sounded utterly soul crushing (and the work at Netflix was still great) and my wife didn't want to move to NYC. But had I taken it I would have made a lot more than any job here on the west coast.
Just wondering out loud...
Following that: Wouldn't the small businesses, due to our anti-trust regulations, actually be considered a cartel if they tried to negotiate as a group and gain the same tax advantages that Amazon has?
So, with that in mind, don't we have some very arbitrary laws? If I could buy up a few small businesses and negotiate with them as pawns, but without a common owner, it's anti-trust behavior?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this; IANAL, but would love to hear someone's opinion. Though game theory would likely prevent their continued cooperation, it seems quite unfair for small businesses that are unable, even in theory, to collectively negotiate on the same scale as Amazon.
Amazon should be investigated for anti-competitive practices, and their ability to negotiate this kind of a circus is certainly an indication of that. The problem has been two-fold -
1. The Sherman act is over 100 years old and was written to target 19th century trusts like Standard Oil and the railroads. These need to be updated to reflect new types of models of trusts and conglomeration (and accumulation of power) that have developed.
2. Enforcement - the SEC and FTC are largely toothless and everyone knows it. If you are a company that can afford a team of lawyers, its unlikely you will be penalized in a way that actually hurts.
If you are going to take unsubstantiated potshots at government agencies you would sound more credible if you at least picked the right agencies.
* * *
On the substantive question here, I agree that small businesses already band together to lobby the government for special treatment. It's not an antitrust violation to ask the government for things, even if you couldn't get together and do those things directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noerr%E2%80%93Pennington_doctr....
Entrepreneurship is important for job creation and very much does help cities, but large corporate jobs are generally more stable and pay better.
Any individual small business obviously doesn’t transact enough dollars to get the personal attention that Amazon does. But small businesses do come together to lobby for these things via chambers of commerce, trade associations, coalitions, regional development authorities, etc. And they tend to be pretty successful since small business is popular with both parties.
My vote was for Newark, personally. Plenty of office space; access to NJIT, Rutgers, and Princeton; and good public transit that connects directly into NYC. Bezos and co. could have done some real good, but instead they will just be contributing to New York's biggest gripes (unsustainable subways, housing shortages, and an aggregation of labor into a few metropolitan areas).
From what I've seen, the reaction to this news on /r/Dallas is very positive. We don't want Amazon here.
(Though I figured it was going to be NoVa from the start. I was just terrified I'd be wrong.)
Let’s get the NJ Path to the airport (3 miles) and the 7 Subway to NJ then Newark, Jersey City become boroughs of NYC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension
Currently, it looks like an hour from Newark Penn to Long Island City. Path to 1,2,3 Lines...
Edward Glaeser's research on the economic and social benefits from density, summarized in Triumph of the City [1] and referenced in this guy's videos [2][3], is worth reviewing. Long story short, agglomeration breeds efficiencies which lead to further agglomeration. New York can uniquely offer things other cities can't because of its density. A few thousand people moving to Newark (assuming they're willing to move to Newark) won't bring those benefits there.
Over centuries, despite population growth and political upheavals, the relative size of cities in almost every geographic region is remarkably stable. That hints at deeper mechanisms which can't be unseated by something as small as Amazon moving.
Better policy: give people in Newark the support they need to move to wherever they like, whether that still be in Newark or somewhere else.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review/Silver-t.htm...
I used a bit of shorthand, above, in saying "the relative size of cities in almost every geographic region is remarkably stable." Let me expand on "geographic region," because it reveals the tension that keeps the world from collapsing into Chongqing [1].
The size of a "geographic region" for this purpose is best defined as the distance the average economically-productive person can commute in a day. Back when people walked, towns tended to be about 10 miles apart. As transport technology improved, Manhattan ate its neighboring boroughs. It is now consuming Northern New Jersey and Connecticut. Barring a quantum leap in transportation tech, Charlotte is safe.
(On the seeds for dispersion: Certain economic activities, like mining and agriculture, occur somewhat independently of population centers. You go where the mineral veins and fertile land are. The fruits of those activities navigate the transportation geography, navigable waterways, flat areas across which rail lines can network and natural harbors, their wealth concentrating at the hubs. Thus, a fundamental industrial tension between distributed economic activity and the concentrating effects of transportation emerges.
In the modern world, those industrial distribution factors remain. Added to them are activities that are cheaper away from population centers, e.g. large-scale manufacturing and nuclear-power generation. Nevertheless, technology so far appears to be increasing the concentrating factor faster than the dispersion term by making (a) the distributed economic activities less labor-intensive and (b) increasing profits to those organizing our social structures-whether in finance, logistics or government–who benefit from the chance encounters proximity promotes.)
> But North Carolina was among the first states to allow banks to operate multiple branches within a state's borders.
https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/bank_notes/2012/0...
I do hope NYC deals with its growing pains -- I finally left last year, in part because of rising costs and aggravation.
Adding a subway line to NYC subway is like herding a multiple feral cat colonies.
It's also increasingly harder and harder to default on student debt, with states forcing extreme measures such as wage garnishing and taking away people's driving licenses: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/business/student-loans-li...
Fully expect to see debtor's prisons back in vogue this century.
Just listen to this girl: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/05/02/308950755/tough-l...
[head slap] I could've had a V-8. Time to take some responsibility for your decisions.
And why do you think that is? Once you get an "education", you can't exactly have another company repossess that from you.
Not being able to remove your student debt by going through bankruptcy is a positive thing.
On the other hand, having our bankruptcy system not apply to a meaningful portion of U.S. lending does create some incentive problems, like the fact that lenders have no incentive to make sure you'll be able to handle repayment, so you can take out huge student loans and find out at the end you have earned a worthless degree and that it will be massively difficult or nearly impossible for you to repay the loan.[1]
[0] For example, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg52412/html/CHRG-11...:
Currently, a debtor may discharge student loans in bankruptcy only upon establishing that repaying such loans would impose an undue hardship, but this has not always been the case. Prior to 1977, student loans were automatically discharged in bankruptcy.
Perceived abuse of the bankruptcy system, as opposed to any real abuse, drove Congress to change this state of affairs. A 1976 GAO report had found that less than 1 percent of all federally insured and guaranteed educational loans were discharged in bankruptcy. In other words, no abuse.
[1] For example http://law.emory.edu/ebdj/content/volume-32/issue-1/comments...
That's true of all unsecured debt (hence, “unsecured”), not a special feature of education debt that justifies treatment different than general unsecured debt.
Problem is that it doesn't make a difference. Lots of other mayors will give the incentives. And, as in the case of NYC, sometimes the governors will come in and override the decision not to give subsidies anyway. (Although in the case of NYC it likely wouldn't have really mattered. I suspect they would have won the HQ2 subsidies or no subsidies.)
I doubt this is a real risk. The Governor is strongly behind this proposal, and has a lot of goodies to trade with the Senate. More likely: Amazon's move prompts new spending on infrastructure and community development around LIC and in random upstate districts whose votes are needed.
Not sure whether worth it or not, but it's all around economic growth which I see as a good thing in general. We can argue about public funds and growing pains, but this problem is better than the opposite problem. If you are in the area and oppose along with the majority of your peers, say so at the polls. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that, outside of pro-tax/anti-big-corp circles, this is gleefully welcomed.
That is over 10 years, so is like $5k a year.
They'll probably pay it back in payroll taxes. The subsidy effect is an unfair tipping of the scales in favor of large companies. But mass has its benefits. You can't renovate LIC in the hope that businesses will move there. An anchor employer underwrites infrastructure with broader social benefits without requiring the city to co-ordinate lots of smaller employers. (The follow-on question being, how do we make such co-ordination easier.)
Especially for a place like New York.
Consider, in Wisconsin, we have to pay on the order of roughly USD400M to USD500M per year, for about the next ten years. And we're a state that, compared to New York, is mired in abject poverty.
And to add insult to injury, that USD400M per year is for only HALF the jobs that New York is getting. And they don't pay as well.
Yeah, not a good time to be a Wisconsinite.
And many weren’t even dependent on Foxconn employing a certain number of people, which is why now that their plans have scaled down the numbers look disastrous.
> Amazon will receive performance-based direct incentives of up to $102 million based on the company creating 5,000 jobs with an average wage of over $150,000 in Nashville.
This is a pretty big deal for Nashville, and costing them only $12,000 per job is a pretty big win.
Fedex is based in Memphis, so this makes sense
New York City Announces Subway Just For Amazon Employees Now
https://www.theonion.com/new-york-city-announces-subway-just...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-move-to-long-island-cit...
The good thing about NYC is that no one needs to drive to work.
Because I'm a young well-paid techie, and I live off of the G line in Brooklyn, which this move would definitely affect.
It is surprisingly convenient the largest private real estate project in the US is conviniently located to Amazon's new HQ.
The MTA will be able to run more trains once they modernized their signaling equipment.
They are using 100 year old equipment:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone...
(Apple has supposedly been in talks with the state about the CIT land as well, just in a less public fashion than Amazon, so I assume something is still going to go in there soon, whether Apple or something else.)
Breaks up existing, stable (if often impoverished) communities.
Increased, concentrated development can have a negative environmental impact.
Narrator: He immediately found something wrong with luxury apartments.
http://fortune.com/2016/08/16/recession-risk-luxury-apartmen...
“Nobody is entitled to live in a certain area for a certain price.” isn’t really true if they were there first and have established a family or a community.
Maintaining a functioning free market is not inherently a moral goal, although many seem to think it is.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-g...
The subsidies and tax cuts they got are an embarrassment to our system and a wonderful look into how this country isn't working for lower classes and small local business that actually build communities. Amazon doesn't need subsidies, this is just a race to the bottom.
And San Francisco? Our 4,100 new apartments is just one per 204 persons. Only three cities managed to do less: San Diego (225), Chicago (324), and New York City (396).
Someone is on the verge of literally starving to death: make them pee in a cup before you give them any food to make sure they’re not an addict.
The Feds ought to use their interstate commerce power to put a stop to these races to the bottom to court individual projects. If some locality wants to be low-tax and business-friendly then go for it, but do it for everyone.
Maybe its your recurring assumption that fairness has anything to do with this. Just excise the prosperity preaching from your brain and you'll see that none of this is related.
They provide a perceived dollar benefit to the governing institution, the governing institution has the authority to catalyze that, the end.
I mean, it kind of is. It not only refers to 'improvements' but also the displacement of anyone below the middle class as a result of those improvements.
What ever happened to living within your means?
Not inherently, no. But legally speaking there are concepts like "rent control" and "adverse possession" that were created to assert on some level that people do, in fact, have a right to continue living in a space that they've occupied for a reasonable duration.
But then subsidizing one business to do it anyway is the problem.
Got ittttttttt
Economies are ecosystems.
It seems regressive, socially, to force this consideration on the people least able to afford it. After all, people who "choose" low-quality housing tend to do so because their choice is necessarily limited, by their lack of access to wealth and financing, to housing that is more attractive for redevelopment.
This has been happening for hundreds of years. Part of being a responsible adult is managing your finances and being prepared. It is crazy to me that so much attention these days is basically advocating for the babysitting of adults.
It is not as if this will happen overnight, either. If we allow people to stay in subsidized housing we remove the biggest carrot for self-motivation.
What are the effects on a kid’s development if they have to change schools and friend groups because their family is displaced due to rising rent? What if people have to move away from family because they can’t afford to stay? How does it impact businesses if their long term employees are suddenly moving away?
Rapidly removing people from communities causes damage to the social fabric of a community, it’s not just about economic effects.
The only ones benefitting are overpaid tech workers supplanting people that do actual tangible work that makes the city tick.
Funny that a tech worker posting on the HN playground is addressing people who deal with real life struggles (raising a family, making increasing rent) how to be a "responsible adult."
Approaching gentrification as some sort of just-world force of nature, and those thrown up in the turmoil of it as willing-by-way-of-neglect, is backwards.
You mean like they were before the area became gentrified? It's not an intrinsic property of neighborhoods to become gentrified - it's an external process forced upon a populace by governments and corporations and landlords
https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program#eligibility
https://esd.ny.gov/sites/default/files/Excelsior_Overview_20...
"National Landing was coined in the joint Northern Virginia pitch to Amazon at the start of its search process last year."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/amazon-pi...
https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/11/13/did-amazon-just-ren...
But that "opportunity" is there because it's a secondary or tertiary choice for employers. Considering that 70%+ people are commuters, a) there are more desirable locations no matter where you're coming from, and b) there's no direct way to get there, other than Route 1, which is going to be a disaster.
No major highways or arteries, Metro goes through Arlington first, etc.
If you live in DC, you have to leave the city. If you live to the west, you'd prefer Dulles, Tysons, or Arlington. If you're to the south, it's Alexandria. To the north, Bethesda. To the west... probably Baltimore, or you have to drive all the way through DC.
Dulles is no better of a commute for most people in the DMV, especially those that want to live within the DC/Arlington area.
They could have gone to Dulles and had a blank slate to build on, but they don't think their employees and prospective employees want to live there. It's at least an hour from downtown during rush hour. It's an exurb, and Amazon does not see that as the future.
However, there are major organizational and political hurdles that would have to be tackled to put any new infrastructure to effective use, so I wouldn't hold my breath. But maybe Amazon's choice of location could spur things in the right direction.
Also, it’s not yet public what these cities promised, but how do you “half build” new transit infrastructure and such?
If you go to Bob's widget factory and place an order for 50,000 widgets, you'll likely get a different per widget price than if you place an order for 25,000 widgets.
If you say at first that you want 50,000 and Bob starts making preparations for that many, then at the last minute you say "Nah, I only want 25,000", Bob is rightfully going to be pissed and you're going to pay a higher per-widget price if your order isn't cancelled altogether.
- Seattle - retail, logistics
- Crystal City - AWS
- New York City - Amazon services for advertising, publishing, media
I would bet Seattle sees those roles slowly pull towards their respective HQs. It's already happening with advertising and NYC as far as I can tell from their job listings.
And if in the future, for some reason, Amazon is required to break up, this would make it a little less messy.
Queens residents are outraged by this news. No one asked them. How is this democracy at work?
Do they have buildings leased? I presumed they were going to build. How can they start hiring already?
Its disgusting this worked as well as it did, $48k/job in tax concessions from NYC and $22k/job from VA, expect to see a lot more of this in the future. Hopefully governments wake up and realize its a race to the bottom that advantages megacorps to such a point that having them is barely worth it, while at the same time hurting local businesses.
EDIT: the tax deductions are one time, not per year, i mixed that up.
It didn't revitalize that neighborhood like the city was hoping for.
That said, perhaps the fear is "over-cutting" -- that HQ2 slurps up top talent from local tech businesses and overbids salaries. I can totally see that happening, especially with the only-handful of truly high-tech businesses in the Northern Virginia community. This is a bad thing short term and a good thing long term.
If you give so much away, the tax benefits cease existing.
One of us is misunderstanding this - I am understanding it as 48k/job and 22k/job, not per year. 48,000*25,000 = 1.2 bil, if it was every year for 10 years, it would be 12 bil.
It's mostly empty warehouses, housing projects, and luxury condos. There's very little in terms of culture or even basic needs, like grocery stores.
> Long Island City has some of the best transit access in New York City, with 8 subway lines, 13 bus lines, commuter rail, a bike-sharing service, and ferries serving the area
Realistically it's the densely overcrowded 7 train, getting worse each year, with no relief in sight. Once the L shuts down in 2019 the G will be absolutely overrun.
> and LaGuardia and JFK airports are in close proximity
Getting to LGA involves taking a train to a bus, by car it's a breeze, JFK is an hour away by train.
LGA would be a quick cab or Uber ride for most people, well within Amazon employee affordability range.
JFK would be comparatively quick by cab/Uber or yeah about 60 minutes by transit. That's par for the course for major metro area airports, certainly including Amazon's hometown of Seattle.
The M and E trains all go to LIC at Court Square or the station you take the moving sidewalk to. Depending on where the offices are, the N, Q, and R could all be closer than the 7. I feel worse for the renters in Greenpoint or Astoria, where many workers are going to go depending on the office location, than I do for the ones in LIC. Either way, this will hopefully also cause MTA to re-extend the G train to Jackson Heights.
In fact, about those luxury condos and housing projects… they're _very_ new, popping up within the past two years and more coming all the time. I’ve been wondering for years what kind of people make the sort of money to afford these places and would also _want_ to live in that area… now I wonder if this decision wasn't made long ago, and word was carefully leaked to various developers to get the housing ready.
It’s not enough to store 25,000 workers, but it’s a lot. Maybe I’m naive but I feel like the immediate area can contain this, with minimal spillover to Manhattan and Brooklyn. (Like, if the workers want to. The area is definitely not the kind of hipster chic or glamour chic or any chic that people come to New York for.)
> ... the immediate area can contain this, with minimal spillover to Manhattan and Brooklyn.
People in high paying jobs are often willing to make huge sacrifices in commute-time to land a desirable job while keeping the housing situation that suits them. There are folks with absolutely insane commutes in the NYC area, will Amazon employees will be any different?
I don't know about this but for years now (around ten years now) I've heard about developers trying to transform locations that used to be all factories into residential neighborhoods. Slowly but surely this has been happening all along Brooklyn's riverside, which used to be dominated by factories.
[1] https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/brooklyn-skyline...
[2] https://ny.curbed.com/2018/8/9/17667488/new-york-domino-park...
[3]https://www.wnyc.org/story/after-years-delays-sunset-park-re...
The Olympic Village was to be on Hunter's Point.
The N is a 10 minute walk to most of Long Island City (source: used to take the N to Manhattan every day while living in LIC).
Even the city's own, goosed up business case looks poor. The conversation has shifted from "let's fund this with only property taxes" to "let's fund this with public money because this will never pay for itself."
https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20180830/REAL_ESTATE/1...
What do you mean by car lengths? I thought all nyc subway trains had the same # of cars
Where are Amazon employees going to live? Probably not out on Queens Boulevard on the 7/E/F/M/R so they'll be taking the train in the opposite direction. If they live on Long Island, they can take LIRR to Hunterspoint Ave (infrequent service, but demand can change that). If they live in New Jersey or in MNR territory, they'll take the train to Manhattan and then take the subway in the opposite direction from the main flow. If they live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, they're taking the train in the reverse peak direction; trains that are largely empty today because very few people do the reverse commute.
Similarly, JFK is 15 minutes to Jamaica on LIRR and 10 minutes on the Airtrain from there to the terminal. LGA... not super great. Probably take the 7/E/F/M/R to Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave. and transfer to the express bus (my preferred way of getting to LGA and I live in Brooklyn).
Finally, as I understand it they are going to use office space in the Citi tower... which is already built and I assume has had tenants throughout its life. So the transit problems were already understood.
All in all, I see this whole thing as completely non-newsworthy. 30,000 employees is nothing compared to the 1 million that already commute in to NYC from the suburbs and the 5 million that already take the subway.
And when were you taking this magical taxi, 2AM?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Take%20the%2...
The real chokepoints for the G will be the transfers to Manhattan-bound trains: to the E at Court Square and to the A/C at Hoyt-Schermerhorn. Those stations will be way overloaded, and the MTA hasn't announced anything that would mitigate this significantly.
However, Amazon-bound commuters shouldn't contribute significantly to this, since they will be exiting the station at Court Square, not transferring. Workers commuting in on the E/M from deeper in Queens might have some issues getting off the train in a very crowded station, but at least they won't be contributing to the capacity problem on the way to Manhattan.
I can't imagine what's going to happen then the L actually shuts down and people no option but to take the G.
You just described the current South Lake Union headquarters.
> There's very little in terms of culture
There are literally 100s of artists who work out of LIC. Many of those "empty warehouses" are actually art studios full of spaces rented out by artists. It's the densest concentration of artists in the outer boroughs, and probably beats out 90% of Manhattan too. Check out the LIC art walk, or the LIC art open, or PS1. I agree with the lack of basic amenities (see: neighborhood in infancy), but lack of culture is an absurd accusation.
> Realistically it's the densely overcrowded 7 train, getting worse each year, with no relief in sight
Why not mention the E, N, W lines, which feed a lot of Queens and more of Manhattan than the 7? LIC (especially Court Square) is a convenient neighborhood to commute into, if it's nothing else. Also, LGA and JFK are both straight shots on the highway (15 and 30 minutes respectively) and JFK is easy by subway+airtrain. This beats out most of the rest of the city, any other criticism should be pointed towards the placement of the airports.
*were
Before I moved out to SF for work, I was an adamant believer that LIC was the most underrated neighborhood in New York. (And I did not live in the eye sore condos.) From Amazon's standpoint, I think they nailed it. New York's tech scene is already growing and the Cornell Tech campus is a short walk from LIC. Unfortunately, I don't think the small art scene that broke out of Brooklyn will survive Amazon's reign.
>It's the densest concentration of artists in the outer boroughs
Surely this crown belongs to Bushwick, but LIC is not entirely devoid of arts and culture (Flux Factory being an example of a repurposed warehouse you describe).
I have spent a ton of time in LiC and as far as I can tell, there are none. Chelsea where Google is, has more housing projects. Housing projects aren't really an issue, but clearly you are trolling or clueless.
By virtue of moving into Toronto, all Canadian cities starting from Pickering/Oshawa all the way down to Hamilton/Waterloo would have seen a boost overtime to real-estate and hence towards economic activity - remember cities like Hamilton and Barrie are struggling to attract highly-educated / high-income residents and this would have given them better odds.
All in all, loss of potential income for the Canadian economy.
Amazon would be foolish to choose a location in Canada due to a their healthcare system and immigration situation. Healthcare isn't that big a deal to a company like Amazon and regardless of the current administration, Americans have never been more supportive of immigration.
Canadians were naive to think they were competitive for an Amazon, and they're wrong if they think Amazon would have chosen them if they weren't so concerned about blowback.
Sometimes, America being welcoming to big businesses has its advantages.