Amazon Comes to Queens

City Journal Audio

Manhattan Institute

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.7 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2018

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nicole Gelinas joins Howard Husock to discuss the resolution of Amazon's year-long "HQ2" competition. This week, the Internet giant announced that it would open new offices in Crystal City, Virginia—near Washington, D.C.—and New York's own Long Island City, Queens.

Located just across the East River from midtown Manhattan, Long Island City had struggled for years as a post-industrial neighborhood until the early 2000s, when rezoning allowed the construction of dozens of luxury residential buildings and modern office towers. The neighborhood still faces challenges, however: it's home to some of the city's largest public housing projects, and its schools are poorly run.

New York State is offering Amazon more than $1.5 billion in tax breaks and grants to create 25,000 jobs in Long Island City. That comes out to about $48,000 per job. Since the announcement, community leaders and elected officials are already making demands on Amazon. They want to see funding for transit fixes, employment for local residents, unionization, and more. As more details emerge on the terms of the city and state's agreement with the company (one example: Amazon's private helipad will be limited to 120 landings a year), many New Yorkers are skeptical.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is your host, Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.
0:06.2	As you may have heard, Amazon has officially announced the results of their HQ2 competition.
0:12.3	The tech giant will be opening new offices with roughly 25,000 employees each in two locations,
0:18.8	Crystal City, Virginia, and New York's own Long Island City, which is just
0:23.4	a quick ride on the 7th train to Queens when it's working from our offices near Grand Central.
0:30.2	Amazon selection is drawing many critics. Some say wealthy metro areas, areas like New York and
0:35.9	Washington, D.C. hardly need the investment compared with other cities.
0:40.3	At the same time, left-wing groups in New York are already making demands on Amazon.
0:45.0	Coming up on the show today, two of my colleagues, Nicole Jelineas and Howard Hussack, both contributing editors at City Journal,
0:51.7	will talk about Amazon's decision to move to Long Island City
0:55.1	and what kind of impact it will have on the city. But one more announcement before we get
1:00.4	started. If you're a listener in the New York area and you like following policy in city and state
1:06.1	of New York, I encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter, The Beat. It's an e-newsletter. You'll get insight on housing,
1:14.0	education, homelessness, infrastructure, and more delivered right to your inbox three times a week.
1:19.7	You can find it and subscribe to it at www.thebeatMI.com. That's it for me. The conversation with Nicole and Howard begins after this.
1:31.3	We hope you enjoy. Hello, I'm Howard Hewis, Vice President for Research and Publications at the Manhattan Institute, and I'm here with Nicole Jolinas, an editor of City Journal.
2:00.2	Hello, Nicole.
2:01.1	Good afternoon, Howard.
2:02.0	Thank you for having me back.
2:03.6	So we're going to talk about something that all of America is talking about today,
2:07.6	and that is the decision of Amazon to locate one of its two new headquarters in New York City,
2:15.1	in the Long Island City District of New York, as well as Crystal City,
	...

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