Amazon Leases Midtown NYC Office Space; Debate Revived About Abandoned Queens Project

By: Noah Robinson

 Announced this week: Amazon no longer plans to spread its wings to Queens, a project worth $3 billion and, instead, will lease office facilities in Midtown Manhattan. They have signed an officialized lease near Hudson Yards, the new shopping center in the most vibrant area of Manhattan. Amazon’s consumers and advertising teams will take over these offices, a total of 350,000 square feet.  

 Amazon’s project seems to be of interest to State representatives. The Queens debacle is not a slight or subtle move as maybe they would have hoped. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who always has something to say, had lots to say on the matter. She currently represents an area in Queens close in proximity to where the initial project would have taken place. “Won’t you look at that, Amazon is coming to NYC anyway – *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.” She wrote explicitly on her Twitter.

 Amazon’s change of heart is actually affecting an array of others, not just the regular old outspoken bunch. Eric Phillips, for example, former press secretary to Mayor Bill de Blasio, wrote on Twitter: “This is a tiny fraction of the jobs, with no help for public housing residents or locals, in a place that was going to be developed and have jobs anyway.” 

In a recent interview, Mr. Gianaris negated Phillips. He stated: “This is where the talent is. They can’t sacrifice the talent to the competition.” Senator Michael Gianaris had a similar approach. The Senator himself is a Queens Democrat who had once supported Amazon’s move to Queen, but changed his mind after learning more about it, refusing to be ignorant.“Amazon is coming to New York, just as they always planned. Fortunately, we dodged a $3 billion bullet by not agreeing to their subsidy shakedown earlier this year.”

When Amazon decided not to pursue their Queens project, they said it has over 5,000 employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island, and will “continue growing these teams.” For this new project, Amazon placed 8,000 in the workforce, with 3,500 employed. 

The Queens project would have been, should have been, but now Amazon invests in creating more and more jobs, slowly putting an end to unemployment in the State in a unique, more focused angle.