Ten months after it dropped controversial plans to locate a campus for its new headquarters in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, Amazon confirmed Friday evening that it will open a new office in Manhattan in 2021.
Sources told NY1 the new 335,000-square-foot office, at 410 10th Avenue, just outside Hudson Yards, will open in the third quarter of 2021.
The company has not confirmed the exact number of employees who will work at the location, but it put the number at "more than 1,500." It's not clear if they will be new hires or relocated employees, but sources said they will work for the consumer and advertising teams.
Despite Amazon rejecting New York City earlier this year, it has long sought to expand its presence in the city. It already had offices in Hudson Yards and Midtown.
The plan is starkly different from the HQ2 proposal. The company was expected to occupy up to 500,000 square feet at 1 Court Square in Queens this year and work to construct more than 4 million square feet of commercial space on the Long Island City waterfront over the next 10 years.
(The location for Amazon's now dead HQ2 campus.)
In February, Amazon nixed its plan after heavy backlash from some community advocates and elected officials. It instead proceeded with plans in Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee. The Arlington site was expected to be the same size as the LIC one, with 25,000 employees. The Nashville office is expected to have 5,000.
The deal — which New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio brokered after competing against more than 200 other metropolitan areas across the continent — was expected to create 25,000 jobs in New York over 10 years.
But the HQ2 plan faced opposition from community groups and members of the City Council. Critics took issue with the deal including billions of dollars in tax incentives for Amazon. The city and state planned to give the company nearly $3 billion in tax breaks.
The list of grievances against the project grew as the months wore on, with critics complaining about Amazon's stance on unions, and some Long Island City residents fretting that the company's arrival would drive up rents and other costs.
The reversal by Amazon happened only about three months after the mayor, governor, and the online giant announced the plan. But there were reports that the opposition from New York advocates and politicians was wearing on Amazon.
Queens and Bronx Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the leading opponents of the HQ2 deal, lashed out at Amazon on Friday, arguing the new Manhattan office was proof the company never needed financial incentives from the city:
State Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens, another elected official at the forefront of the anti-HQ2 movement, also took a swipe at the tech giant.
"Fortunately, we dodged a $3 billion bullet by not agreeing to their subsidy shakedown earlier this year," he said in a statement. "Now, we must enact reforms to our economic development programs to ensure no company can seek to take advantage of the public again."
When the deal fell through earlier this year, Cuomo blamed a small group of politicians who "put their own narrow political interests above their community" for Amazon's decision.
De Blasio, meanwhile, who previously criticized local elected officials for their harsh stances on the HQ2 deal, put the blame on Amazon.
"We made an agreement with them. They chose New York City. We were keeping the agreement. Guess what? Some community activists wanted to see something else," de Blasio said at a speech at Harvard. "That's part of life."
"Instead of an actual dialogue," the mayor continued. "to try and resolve those issues, we get a call this morning saying, 'We're taking our ball and we're going home.' I've never seen anything like it."
To attract Amazon, the city and state planned to give the company a combined $3 billion in tax breaks. This was one of the major complaints by opponents of the project who felt it would amount to a corporate handout.
Proponents of the project, including Cuomo and de Blasio, said for every $1 Amazon received in incentives, the city and state would have received $9 in return.
"The total state and city revenue that will be produced is estimated at $27.5 billion," Cuomo said at the November 2018 news conference announcing the deal. "The revenue-to-incentive ratio is 9-to-1 — that is the highest rate of return for an economic incentive program that the state has ever offered."
In addition, Amazon was to donate space on its campus for a tech startup incubator and for use by artists and industrial businesses. The company was also to donate a site for a new public school for either elementary or middle grades. In its announcement, Amazon said it would also invest in infrastructure improvements and new green spaces. All told, that was expected to add up to a $2.5 billion direct investment from the company.
Still, there were plenty of concerns. Critics of the project said the overtaxed subway system couldn't handle thousands of extra riders every day. It's unclear whether any of Amazon's infrastructure investment would have gone toward improving transit in the neighborhood.
Opponents of HQ2 had also grilled Amazon officials about the company's labor practices, its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide facial recognition technology, and other issues.
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Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.
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FURTHER AMAZON READING
The Big App: How the City Became Silicon Valley's Biggest Rival
Why the Amazon Debacle Didn't Kill the City's Tech Industry
AI, Robots and Humans: Inside an Amazon Fulfillment Center
Amazon's Reversal Called 'A Blip on the Radar' For Long Island City
How Cuomo Took Aim at a Board That Could've Made Trouble for Amazon HQ2 Deal
How New York's Labor Community Split Over Amazon Pulling Out of Long Island City
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