Jackson Heights Life

The mayor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlXCMecubjM

for the lower-middle class (or even middle-middle class) residents of the surrounding areas, not so much. a rising tide does NOT lift all boats -- it's not like we're suddenly going to boost the salaries of EMTs, nurses, public school teachers or retail workers by 20 or 30 percent. those folks will remain where they are, and a gulf will open, a greater gulf than the one that already exists.

Based on what happened in Seattle, Amazon workers tended to spend a lot of money in the community, helping to maintain and create local jobs. Think restaurants, bakeries, hairdressers, cinemas, of course dog daycare centers, etc. They didn't just hoard their money.

And salaries generally did go up in Seattle (and the minimum wage went up, notably). Partly because the Amazon workers could afford to pay higher prices for things, so other employers could afford to raise salaries. And also partly because other employers had to increase their salaries in order to compete with Amazon for employees. Amazon hires a really broad range of people, not just engineers.

Probably one of the worst things that happened in Seattle is that the prices of anything that was very limited in supply went up sharply (e.g. rent and housing prices), which did hurt a lot of people in the community, unless they already owned property themselves. It probably could have been much worse, Seattle was actually pretty good at knocking down old warehouses and buildings and constructing new apartments, which helped to prevent severe price escalation like in San Francisco and the Bay Area (where no new housing seems to ever be constructed). But the house prices still escalated pretty rapidly in Seattle.

BTW, for anyone curious about Amazon work culture, this site is pretty interesting: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/. It has stories about office jobs and also about warehouse jobs.

Most of these Amazon techies will probably live in LIC in the towers in the sky and walk to work.

In Seattle, instead of living right next to work in some giant tower, a lot of Amazonians ended up living in nearby neighborhoods with more character and better restaurants and bars, like Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, where they could still walk or cycle to work but where the housing stock was older and nicer.

As Amazon grew, the area directly around their HQ tended to become more boring and sterile, as existing businesses closed down and were replaced with giant new Amazon buildings, which sometimes had a Starbucks or other shop on their ground floor but were basically a dead zone at night and on weekends. By far, the most lively place near Amazon was a Whole Foods, which closed at 9pm and is now part of Amazon anyway.

If Long Island City is really chosen for the HQ, then I would expect a lot of people to live in Astoria, Greenpoint, Sunnyside/Sunnyside Gardens, etc, instead of actually living in Long Island City where everything seems kind of ugly and bland. Maybe Jackson Heights near the Roosevelt/74th station as well, though it is much too far to walk, but the subway access is pretty great. Or maybe the area near Forest Hills station if they have kids and want the best schools, but most Amazonians had dogs instead of kids, so expect to see a lot of fancy dog daycares and salons pop up in Queens

Here's an example of how many buildings Amazon now occupies in Seattle, although even that map is out of date: http://www.amazonhqtours.com/take-an-audio-tour/. That whole area marked with yellow buildings was dead outside of work hours, and not somewhere most people wanted to live, especially because they often didn't hold positive feelings towards Amazon and didn't plan to stay working at Amazon for longer than 1 or 2 years.