Jackson Heights Life

Quote from: abcdefghijk on November 09, 2018, 12:55:30 PM

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Here's an example of how many buildings Amazon now occupies in Seattle, although even that map is out of date: http://www.amazonhqtours.com/take-an-audio-tour/.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.

Thanks for this.

I'm not convinced the situations are analogous.

In Seattle, it's 50,000 employees in a town of 725,000.

Here it'll be 25,000 employees in a town of nearly 9 million. Queens alone has over 2.5 million I think.

New York is a giant place over 10x Seattle's size.

These folks will simply blend into the diverse mix here...and add to it.  That's the beauty and dynamism of New York.

 

Quote from: abcdefghijk on November 10, 2018, 09:21:34 AM

I'm not convinced the situations are analogous.

In Seattle, it's 50,000 employees in a town of 725,000.

Here it'll be 25,000 employees in a town of nearly 9 million. Queens alone has over 2.5 million I think.

New York is a giant place over 10x Seattle's size.

These folks will simply blend into the diverse mix here...and add to it.  That's the beauty and dynamism of New York.

I basically agree, but FYI, the "official" Seattle is just a tiny area (a bit like the "official" San Francisco). The area around it that most people would think of as still being Seattle (and where you could easily commute to Amazon) is several million people, depending on where you draw the borders.

For example Seattle + Bellevue + Kirkland + Redmond has a similar area to Queens and has over 1 million people.

I think Amazon might not have a huge impact on NYC overall, but it will definitely have a big impact on the neighborhoods near Long Island City. If other tech companies start moving to NYC (or growing here), e.g. to hire all the dissatisfied Amazon employees who have already moved here, then that could have a big impact on NYC.

For example, there was an article a few days ago that Google is going to double their headcount in NYC (to 20,000+), and Facebook also has a large office here which will probably grow. Nobody really wants to live in the San Francisco Bay Area anymore when they could live in a more interesting city like NYC and still have a great job, especially when it's often cheaper to live in NYC as well.

Thanks.

Now that's interesting.

So you're saying Amazon is simply the beginning of a wave.

Now. Let's see if it leads to a tsunami!   

There's a condo buying frenzy going on in LIC now -- van loads of Chinese buyers (and plenty of non-Chinese buyers as well).

https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/amazon-s-move-to-long-island-city-sparks-condo-frenzy-114128

Amazon’s Move to Long Island City Sparks Condo Frenzy
Brokers flooded with clients seeking real estate in Queens neighborhood, reminding some of pre-crash property boom


BY Josh Barbanel  |  ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON November 13, 2018  |  The Wall Street Journal

Even before Amazon.com Inc. decided to put a headquarters in Long Island City, the retail giant’s interest in the Queens neighborhood unleashed a condo gold rush. Amazon’s interest was made known scarcely a week ago, yet brokers say they are already selling units—sometimes sight-unseen—via text message. Others are renting vans and packing them full of clients eager to view multiple buildings, or holding group tours in Chinese.

Now, with Amazon’s commitment to the New York City neighborhood, brokers are predicting the apartment market there will surge further. "This is like a gift from the gods for the Long Island City condo market," said Patrick W. Smith, a Stribling agent in the area.

Up until last week, the Long Island City market had suffered from slowing sales and rising inventory. Now, some brokers say the sudden mood shift reminds them of the heady days of New York City’s condo boom just before the housing market crashed during the 2008 financial crisis. "This is the first time in my 20-year career that I have seen the market go from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market overnight, based on a rumor," Mr. Smith said.

During the first six days since Amazon’s interest in Long Island City became public, searches on the listing site StreetEasy.com for residential property in the neighborhood surged 295% from the same period a week earlier, StreetEasy said. The biggest spike occurred in the first few days after the news, when search volume jumped more than 400%, StreetEasy said.

Real estate broker Teresa Ali faced a frenzy at the sales office for the Galerie, a new brick and glass building going up on Jackson Avenue. Though the building, which wraps around a central garden, won’t open until spring, Ms. Ali said her team met with nearly 100 buyers on Saturday and Sunday. More than 60 other buyers were turned away after leaving their names.

The same building logged 34 visits from potential buyers for the entire previous week, she added. "Multiple offers were on the table" after Sunday’s open house, while four more offers came in overnight. "It was bedlam," Ms. Ali, a sales manager at Halstead Property Development Marketing, said. Her team ran simultaneous group tours in English and Mandarin over the weekend.

‘Buyers are hoping it will become the next Silicon Valley and want to be in on that,’ one broker said of the sudden surge in interest in Long Island City.

Speculative investors and buyers who plan to live in the neighborhood are betting on the promise that an Amazon headquarters would bring new amenities and stature to a once dilapidated industrial neighborhood, pushing up prices in the future.

The past week was the building’s best ever, with deals on six of its 84 units and several more under negotiations, she said. There were 20 appointments last weekend, compared with four the week before.Eve n before the Amazon decision, Ms. Lee said, prices were scheduled to go up.

"Clients I hadn’t spoken to in seven or eight years started texting me," said Eric Benhaim, the president and founder of Modern Spaces. "I sold 20 apartments via text." He said his firm’s agents, who represent many new condo developers, were now meeting with these clients to work through the paperwork.

Brokers say there are about 350 new condominiums on the market in Long Island City and about 50 resale apartments. Some of these resale units had lingered on the market for weeks without attracting any interest but are now in demand, too, said Mr. Smith.

On Friday, he found that weekend appointments at many condo sales offices were filled. So on Saturday, he took five clients on a tour—on foot and by Uber—of open houses. And on Sunday, Mr. Smith rented two dark blue minivans with drivers, and he and an associate each rode shotgun while showing properties to groups of five buyers.
Other clients met them along the way, he said, so by the end of the day they had chaperoned at least 15 clients.
"The showroom was jam-packed and only grew," Mr. Smith said, adding that other clients crowded into the dedicated conference room originally reserved for his group.

lol.

https://www.theonion.com/new-york-city-announces-subway-just-for-amazon-employee-1830418104

I think this will affect JH more than some people realize. 25K is a lot of people and of course they will not all be all young, single techies. There will be quite a few people with families who will not want to live in LIC and will look for housing with more space (and lots of people want pre-war apartments, which is not that easy to find in LIC). It's a crappy commute from Brownstone Brooklyn so I do think JH will see a bit of an influx and increased prices. 

I wonder how this will affect the artists community. I know several in JH who have studios in LIC. In fact, I imagine that many or even most artists in these parts of Queens who rent outside studios do so in LIC, since that's where there has traditionally been availability.

Excited for Amazon’s Arrival in Long Island City? The Results for New York’s Art Community Won’t Be Pretty

Btw, the LIC open studios are this weekend (Nov 17-18, 2018)

Yes...as LIC morphs into a tech version of Williamsburg, I would say the artists' time in LIC has come to an end. 

My guess is that the warehouses in the industrial area around Northern Woodside will become artists' new homes. That's my prediction!

In 15 years it'll be the Bronx's turn.