Dear Amazon, New York City said, it’s not you – well, actually it is you. And today – Valentine’s Day no less, Amazon said ok, I get it.
The company announced that the one-half of its North American HQ2 slated for Queens, NY, now will not happen. For more than a year, economic development officials from regions across the country pursued Amazon’s HQ2, with its promises of thousands of jobs and billions in investment.
But for some New Yorkers, the incentives being offered to the one of the richest companies in the world were too much.
“State Senator Michael Gianaris and other leaders protested that the agreement was bad for New York and bad for its people. They argued that it is absurd for city and state taxpayers to subsidize one of the world’s most valuable companies, owned by the world’s richest man, with as much as $3 billion in taxpayer money,” according to the New York Times.
As Gianaris and others voiced disapproval, other jurisdictions renewed their efforts to woo Amazon.
But in its statement, Amazon said: we do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.