Jackson Heights Life

LIC is already ultra-gentrified. 

Even 10 years ago it cost top $'s to live there. I looked.

25,000 in a population of 2.5 million in Queens ain't gonna really change Queens.

This hysteria is irrational.

The population of inner Seattle where Amazon is situated is less than 750,000. 50,000 are Amazonians.

It's a mathematical numbers game. But folks are not being driven by logic.  Rather by emotion.

The "hysteria" is just as much about giving billions of dollars to one of the richest men in the world while nickel and dime-ing the local residents.

 Am thinking that the precedent of what has happened in Seattle and to a lesser extent, San Francisco, is the strongest
case against Amazon here. Once burned, twice shy as the saying goes. And the idea that Queensbridge residents would
be secure in their housing and offered jobs without a contractual obligation seems naive to expect Queens to believe.
The tax incentives can be amortized or put into whatever algorithms they want but the gut feel is that we will all collectively
be the worse for them being here.

Westchester, Manhattan and Long Island residents might be disappointed but Western Queens, maybe not so much.

Mr. Bezos is not receiving $3 Billion Dollars from New York.   There are 491.2 Million Outstanding Shares.  Mr. Bezos currently owns 78,899,000 shares which represents 16.0% of the outstanding shares.  Institutions own 55.2% of the outstanding shares and individual investors own 28.8% of the outstanding shares. 

Amazon should of moved to Florida or Texas because they have zero state and city taxes. In the long run that is worth much more than any tax breaks they got from NYC. There is much more land to build a whole corporate park with free parking for the employees.

People don’t understand that Amazon was offered the same benefits available to any business willing to create jobs in Queens. The difference with the huge number is that nobody ever created 25k jobs in Queens from an out of state corporation. Amazon should probably reconsider moving here and avoid all our lunatic local politicians who never created even one job.

JK Resident:  I completely agree that Amazon should reconsider New York and move elsewhere.  It never made sense selecting NYC with a high cost of living plus both a State & City Income tax and an almost 9% sales tax.  Beside Florida & Texas which  has only a Federal Income Tax, Pennsylvania is the only State with a flat tax which is 3.1% regardless of income plus lots of very affordable housing.  Based on the number of shares that Mr. Bezos owns, his portion of the NY $3 Billion is $480 Million.  If Maryland has been chosen it would have been $1.0 Billion.  If New Jersey had been chosen it would be $1.1 Billion.  Those of us long term Amazon stockholders who follow the company on Amazon Yahoo Message Board strongly believe that within 5 years the stock has the potential to be $5,000 a share.  If this should happen Mr. Bezos shares will be worth $395 Billion Dollars so if you look at the big picture $480 Million means very little. 

Looks like the small businesses of LIC are fighting back against the politicians and activists who are trying to kill this deal. Sign if you are in favor of Amazon coming.

https://www.change.org/p/long-island-city-small-businesses-collect-signatures-in-support-of-amazon-hq2-in-long-island-city?cs_tk=Ank3JV0jy4oHIMrQYVwAAXicyyvNyQEABF8BvN7IQz3fHdxg_MD_CmKjnP0=&utm_campaign=380795dd05f94d909911803281a66879&utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_signer_receipt&utm_term=cs

You guys make up your own facts.

AMZN chose NYC for its talent pool. The tax breaks were offered everywhere and just about anywhere, in many cases on better terms. It's not about the money.

I would be the first in line if I could get my hands on a 1 to 9 return on investment. In dollar terms, it is 27.5 billion. I would think the socialists would be salivating.

The 25,000 jobs plus innumerable peripheral service jobs are NYC residents' jobs, not out-of-towners coming here to push us out. Queensbridgers are in an opportunity zone.

NYC is far too diversified and strategic to be compared to outcomes in Seattle. And their coffee is lousy. Seattle is most likely better off because of Amazon, but the grass is always greener....

I would say that anyone supporting this project is willfully putting their head in the sand and should go back and read this 2015 NY Times article about Amazon's toxic work place culture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

I have been to both 3 1/2 hour city council meetings about this. Here is what was revealed. After pitting american cities against each other in a sham contest, Amazon is now pitting unions against each other by making agreements with one and parading them around but, refusing to make agreements with any others.

They also flat out said they would not sign a neutrality agreement if workers wanted to organize. Meaning that if, maybe, people wanted to form a union in the future, they would intervene.

My friend is a small business owner in Seattle. He has his own record shop. I asked if Amazon employees shop at the store or does the company support small businesses. His response was that they don't support brick and morter shops because they are pushing streaming and online services. The people who do shop there are actually from other countries here on work visas, not people from Seattle, Washington state, or even the US.

Additionally, the city of Seattle is now plagued by traffic because a big part of tech culture is taking your own car somewhere with ride share apps. His friend drives a city bus and he can't go anywhere at work as a result of the added congestion. The topic of traffic, cars, and fatal accidents is a regular subject on this forum.

I'm confident it would be pretty easy for one of the largest tech companies to create a bunch of fake online profiles to sign petitions and post here in support of them. That's pretty much what they are in the business of doing, more or less fooling people.

Please read the above link.