A senior executive from Amazon, one of the world’s biggest companies, led by the world’s richest person, found himself last weekend in a showdown with a suburban state senator.

The executive, Brian Huseman, who is based in Washington, D.C., was trying to find out whether the New York state senator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, would exert more control over an obscure state board that had the authority to block Amazon’s ambitious plans to expand in New York City.

It was the second phone call in two days between Huseman and Stewart-Cousins, who had just risen to power as Democratic majority leader.

And once again, Stewart-Cousins told Huseman that state lawmakers would use their power to assess the deal.

“We just need to move on,” Stewart-Cousins said, she recalled in an interview.

It was not the response that Amazon wanted.

For Amazon, long accustomed to highly deferential treatment from localities across the country, the phone call was a further indignity after weeks of relentless criticism from lawmakers, unions and progressive activists that the company feared was staining its reputation.

On Thursday, Amazon abruptly announced that it was canceling the deal, under which the company had promised to create more than 25,000 jobs on a new campus in Long Island City, Queens, in return for nearly $3 billion in government incentives.

An examination of the deal’s collapse showed that Amazon badly misjudged how it would be received in New York, apparently because the company has rarely ventured into such a raucous political arena as it has pursued a breakneck expansion in recent years.

This account was pieced together from dozens of interviews this week with government officials, Amazon representatives, lobbyists and others. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay closed-door deliberations.

The company’s retreat capped several days of intense behind-the-scenes maneuvering between government officials and Amazon executives, including efforts by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to woo unions and Mayor Bill de Blasio to try to reach Jeff Bezos, the company’s chief executive.

On Monday, Cuomo and de Blasio, bitter rivals who had put aside their differences to mount a bid for an Amazon site, met in Albany to discuss how to pacify unions that had voiced strong objections to the company.

De Blasio then called a top executive in the company, seeking assurances that the deal was still on. The executive did not indicate that it was in trouble.

Public housing residents rallied Monday, when a second poll came out showing broad support around the state for the deal.

“We’re working to make sure that folks from our neighborhood could benefit from those jobs; there’s going to be a lot of jobs,” Bishop Mitchell G. Taylor, a community leader, said Monday. Taylor grew up in the Queensbridge Houses, the large public housing development in Long Island City.

On Tuesday morning, senior aides to the governor and mayor talked by phone with Huseman about next steps, including how to promote the jobs that the company was planning for New York.

On the ground, the efforts appeared to be paying off: More local elected leaders were declaring their support for the deal. “N.Y. loves Amazon” buttons began appearing on lapels in the city.

By Wednesday, a senior Amazon executive in charge of real estate, John Schoettler, arrived from Seattle for a meeting convened by Cuomo in his Manhattan offices between Amazon and unions. By the end, the unions and the executives seemed to be making progress toward a resolution.

That night, the company decided internally to pull the plug.

“Out of nowhere, they took their ball and went home,” de Blasio said Thursday night.

He learned of the decision in a phone call from Jay Carney, an Amazon vice president and a former spokesman for President Barack Obama, according to a person briefed on the call.

Amazon can deliver toothpaste in traffic-snarled Manhattan on the same day an order is placed. But when it came to navigating the politics of New York, the company appeared out of step, a giant stumbling onto a political stage that — despite its data-driven success — it never fully understood.

“Amazon underestimated the power of a vocal minority and miscalculated how much it needed to engage with those audiences to make HQ2 a success,” Joseph Parilla, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said, referring to the second headquarters search.

The company, in particular, failed to develop a robust strategy to address the growing influence of the progressive left in New York, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of Queens, who was elected in November and was a fervent skeptic of the deal.

The political winds changed so swiftly that local lawmakers in Queens who had signed a letter in 2017 trying to woo Amazon refashioned themselves as champions of the opposition in recent months.

One of them, state Sen. Michael Gianaris, refused repeatedly to even meet with Amazon representatives despite at least three requests. So, too, did Corey Johnson, the speaker of the City Council; Johnson held hearings instead of the private meetings Amazon requested. (Amazon met with 35 of the 51 council members, and more had been scheduled for this week.)

A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to comment for this article.

But two people involved in internal discussions at Amazon said the company’s concerns were not primarily that the deal would fail to receive government approval. Executives were confident it would cross the finish line.

The company instead felt that, with little sign that the opposition was dissipating, it was staring down a decades’ long commitment to a political climate in which everything the company did would be scrutinized.

“Amazon had to think about what a long-term relationship with New York City would look like, and based on the experiences with local and state politicians to date, concluded it would be difficult at best,” one of the people said.

Amazon executives involved in the negotiations said they were frustrated that the economic benefits of the project — a winning argument with many business leaders and some community members, including public housing residents — failed to sway some officials.

“What we were hearing from people — small business owners, educators, community leaders — was completely different than what we were getting from the local elected officials,” said one of the people involved with the Amazon side.

Those feelings, and Amazon’s eventual retreat, were foreshadowed by testimony from Huseman last month at the City Council: “We were invited to come to New York,” he said, adding pointedly, “and we want to invest in a community that wants us.”

Instead, the company saw how its plans for Queens had become such a flash point that they turned into an issue in the Feb. 26 special election for public advocate, a citywide position with a big megaphone. Company officials worried that the debate over the project could drag on and become ensnared in the 2021 mayoral election, and beyond.

Amazon grew in Seattle for almost two decades with little civic engagement. Initially, most of its buildings were built by an outside developer. Neither Bezos, nor any Amazon executive, attended the groundbreaking ceremony for its headquarters that the mayor and governor threw.

By about 2015, as Amazon was developing its own buildings, and with roughly 25,000 employees in Washington state, it started engaging more, albeit slowly.

A top real estate executive chaired the local Chamber of Commerce, and it began forging relationships with two local nonprofits, one that works with homeless families and another job training program for the restaurant industry.

Yet even as housing costs soared in the booming city, Amazon did not take public positions in debates over how to alleviate the affordability crunch. It largely saw its role as creating high-paying jobs, and the city’s job to accommodate them.

So last year, when Amazon said it might halt its growth locally if the city approved a tax on large employers to fund homeless services and low-income housing, it sent a shock throughout Seattle. The city was not accustomed to the company playing hardball, let alone commenting on politics.

The trouble in New York City began last year with a hostile City Council hearing in December, and then another last month.

The company endured hours of attacks on its plans to come to New York, and on its business practices — particularly its stance against unions — in general. Protesters heckled. Council members forced an Amazon official to declare the company’s anti-union stance on the record.

The moment resonated for executives: Amazon was not accustomed to being forced to respond publicly on its policies and operations.

A turning point came on Feb. 4, when Stewart-Cousins, the new Democratic leader in the state Senate, selected Gianaris, the state senator and one of Amazon’s most vocal opponents, to the board with the power to block the deal. It was clear the opposition would not go away soon.

Cuomo could refuse to appoint Gianaris, of Queens. But the company wanted to know: What would happen then?

So on Feb. 8 and then again on Feb. 9, Amazon’s representatives spoke on the phone with Stewart-Cousins.

She told the company’s representatives that Cuomo was planning to reject Gianaris. But she could not say precisely what would happen next, the people said. Who would be named in his place?

Amazon wanted certainty that the next person selected would not be a roadblock: The fate of its campus could not hang on the whims of an unnamed state senator on a board — the Public Authorities Control Board — that few could name.

But she did not offer any guarantees. Less than a week later, the deal was dead.</s>Amazon announced Thursday that it will not build a headquarters in Queens due to local opposition. Now, local and state politicians are passing around the blame and examining the fallout."After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens," spokeswoman Jodi Seth said in a statement.Last week, the Washington Post first reported that Amazon was reconsidering the plan."We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion - we love New York," the online giant said in a blog post, adding that it already has 5,000 employees in the city and plans to increase that number.Mayor Bill de Blasio slammed Amazon for pulling out of the deal."You have to be tough to make it in New York City," he said. "We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world. Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity. We have the best talent in the world and every day we are growing a stronger and fairer economy for everyone. If Amazon can't recognize what that's worth, its competitors will."Amazon announced in November that it had chosen the Long Island City neighborhood in Queens for one of two new headquarters, with the other in northern Virginia. The company had planned to spend $2.5 billion building its new New York City office.Governor Andrew Cuomo had championed Amazon's plan. He released the following statement:An indication that Cuomo was growing concerned over opposition to the Amazon deal and reports of the company having second thoughts was evident in comments he made during an interview Tuesday with a New York City radio station."I don't think they're bluffing," he said. "I think this is very serious."Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, whose appointment of Michael Gianaris to a key post started all this, said the "process was clearly flawed."Gianaris said the decision, "shows why they would have been a bad partner for New York ... Amazon continued its effort to shakedown governments to get its way."Nicole Malliotakis, who ran against the mayor and is a frequent critic, said "Nice going anti-capitalists. Taxpayers wanted a BETTER deal, not to KILL the deal."The online retailer faced opposition from some New York politicians and activists, who were unhappy with the billions of dollars in tax incentives and grants that Amazon was awarded.The move would have brought 25,000 jobs to New York City.Jimmy Van Bramer and other members of the City Council had tried unsuccessfully to get Amazon officials to agree to remain neutral in the face of any potential union drive. Van Bramer said that he believes Amazon feared the possibility of a successful union drive in New York:"They knew that their anti-union, their virulently anti-union position here was not tenable here and if they caved here then they would face rising pressures all across the country and the world to allow their workers to organize," he said.Unlike New York, elected officials in Virginia have welcomed the company with open arms.The company is not reopening their search and will re-base the jobs to Northern Virginia, the other site selected for Amazon's headquarters, and Nashville, Tennessee.New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy kept the door open in case Amazon changes its mind."After learning of the decision to pull out of their chosen HQ2 location, I contacted Amazon and City of Newark stakeholders directly, continuing a constant dialogue that predates my time as governor," he said. "New Jersey is open for business, and now more than ever, Newark is the clear choice as the next presence for Amazon corporate offices. Amazon now has the opportunity to join in Newark's story of a city on the rise."Make the Road New York -City Councilman Eric Ulrich -City Council Speaker Cory Johnson -----------</s>Amazon said Thursday it decided to cancel its plans to build a new major campus in New York City.

Following a yearlong, public search for a new second headquarters dubbed HQ2, Amazon in November announced plans to build two 25,000-employee campuses, one in Long Island City, Queens, in New York, and another in Arlington, Virginia. Both locations were selected from over 200 bidders and were expected to receive $2.5 billion in investments from the e-commerce giant. Nashville was also selected to host a new 5,000-person "center of excellence."

But, the New York City campus received quick and persistent criticism from local union supporters, the New York City Council and a number of elected officials, including state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents Queens, and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

"We do not intend to reopen the HQ2 search at this time," Amazon said Thursday. "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."

Several protests were staged against the planned campus and Amazon executives faced withering criticism during two City Council meetings, in which council members pilloried the company for its mostly non-union workforce and alleged work with US Immigration and Custom Enforcement. Amazon's incentives package of about $3 billion was also a major concern, especially because of the company's massive size and its CEO Jeff Bezos' perch as the world's richest person.

"Rather than addressing the legitimate concerns that have been raised by many New Yorkers, Amazon says you do it our way or not at all, we will not even consider the concerns of New Yorkers – that's not what a responsible business would do," Chelsea Connor, director of communications for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said in a statement Thursday.

The union has been a frequent critic of Amazon's working conditions and has partnered with Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island in their push to unionize.

Despite loud opposition to the plan, the company as recently as Friday said it was "focused on engaging with our new neighbors" on the project. A Quinnipiac poll from December also showed strong support for the new campus, with 60 percent of Queens residents approving of the project and 26 percent against it.

The company also received strong backing from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who pushed to get the highly coveted project. James Patchett, head of the New York City Economic Development Corp., also repeatedly argued for the massive benefits of the HQ2 project during the heated council meetings, saying it would protect New York from future recessions and be a boon for its development as a tech hub.

Here is the company's full statement:

After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens. For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City. We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion—we love New York, its incomparable dynamism, people, and culture—and particularly the community of Long Island City, where we have gotten to know so many optimistic, forward-leaning community leaders, small business owners, and residents. There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams. We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and their staffs, who so enthusiastically and graciously invited us to build in New York City and supported us during the process. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have worked tirelessly on behalf of New Yorkers to encourage local investment and job creation, and we can't speak positively enough about all their efforts. The steadfast commitment and dedication that these leaders have demonstrated to the communities they represent inspired us from the very beginning and is one of the big reasons our decision was so difficult. We do not intend to reopen 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. Thank you again to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and the many other community leaders and residents who welcomed our plans and supported us along the way. We hope to have future chances to collaborate as we continue to build our presence in New York over time.</s>In the wake of Amazon’s announcement to back out of their Long Island City headquarters deal, a local real estate website believes that real estate interests will shift in the neighborhood.

The New York City real estate website StreetEasy has been tracking interest in price growth in the area since Amazon announced their intention to bring their new headquarters to Long Island City in November.

Following the company’s Feb. 14 announcement that they are backing out of their plans, StreetEasy believes that Long Island City will see a dramatic change in area interest compared to Amazon’s original announcement.

“Long Island City’s housing market will likely experience a bit of whiplash as a result of this latest news,” said Nancy Wu, StreetEasy’s Economic Data Analyst. “In the weeks after the initial announcement that Amazon would be coming to Queens, we saw sellers in the area increase their asking prices, interest from buyers and investors spike to new highs, and for-sale listings beyond Long Island City – in areas like Midtown and Astoria – tout their proximity to the new Amazon campus.”

According to StreetEasy, after the news of Amazon’s potential decision to bring the HQ2 to Long Island City, interest in the area skyrocketed. From Nov. 5-7, StreetEasy’s searches went up 283 percent compared to same three days in the prior week (Oct. 29-31). The next week, when the news was confirmed by Amazon, interest shot up 519 percent in search traffic between Nov. 12-14, compared to Oct. 29-31.

Following the increased interest in the area, prices in Long Island City began to soar. In the five weeks following the announcement, 18.8 percent of homes for sale in Long Island City increased their price. In the five weeks prior to the announcement, no listing in Long Island City raised its price.

Long Island City also saw a decrease in price cuts following the announcement. Compared to the five weeks prior, StreetEasy found that only five listings in Long Island City cut their price in the five weeks after the announcement.

According to StreetEasy, over 75 homes that were for sale in 48 buildings touted their proximity to the planned Amazon HQ2 site. However, the majority of listings mentioned their proximity to the HQ2 campus were in Midtown East (42 listings). There were only 3 listings in Long Island City touting their proximity to the new Amazon headquarters.

Now with Amazon’s intentions of pulling out of the deal, StreetEasy expects that prices and buyer interest in Long Island City should return to normal.

“Now that the company has decided against setting up their new headquarters in Queens, we expect asking prices and buyer interest to fairly quickly revert back to their pre-announcement levels,” said Wu. “The Amazon reversal highlights the risk inherent in speculative investment in real estate in the city. While the city has enjoyed swift economic growth, turning a quick profit remains difficult, particularly in areas dense with new development.”</s>Online giant cancels its plans to build campus in Queens, after tax break opposition and questions about unions

Amazon has cancelled plans to build one of its second headquarters in New York, after the e-commerce giant encountered unexpected opposition to its plans.

Amazon’s decision to create a second headquarters outside its Seattle home, had triggered a bidding war between various US states. Indeed, Washington DC at one stage had been widely tipped as leading the race for the location of Amazon’s second headquarters.

But in November Amazon chose Queens in New York, as well as a site in Northern Virginia for its two secondary headquarters – known collectively as HQ2.

Amazon’s plan had been to invest $5 billion in the construction and operation of the two campuses, including the creation of 50,000 new jobs.

All of this attracted huge interest from various US states, which offered all types of tax incentives to lure the firm to their state.

Amazon had previously admitted that economic incentives were a factor in its decision on where to locate HQ2, but it always said that attracting top talent was the leading driver.

And it didn’t take long for Amazon’s plans for one of its HQ2 locations in the Long Island City neighbourhood in Queens, to encounter some surprise opposition.

This opposition was evidenced earlier this week with the appointment of one of Amazon’s most vocal critics to a key post.

Michael Gianaris, the Democratic Senator who represents the Long Island City, Queens district was last week nominated to serve on the Public Authorities Control Board, a little-known state board that must approve New York City’s deal to bring Amazon to Queens.

The appointment would given Gianaris veto power over the deal, which he has previously said he opposes because of the $3 billion (£2.3bn) in state and city tax incentives it would give Amazon.

Gianaris argues other companies, such as Google and Apple, have launched ambitious expansion projects in New York City without such substantial tax breaks, an argument recently seconded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Gianaris has also said Amazon’s move to New York was problematic because the company opposes unionisation.

He had called for the deal to be scrapped and for negotiations to begin again from scratch.

Meanwhile, it had emerged that Amazon was having second thoughts about the deal due to the unexpected hostility from Queens residents.

The company was reportedly very concerned about demands to allow its New York workers to unionise, according to an unnamed person cited by the FT.

This opposition prompted a rethink at Amazon, as it had yet to sign a formal lease for the Queens campus, and was therefore in a position to pull out of New York.

And now the firm has reportedly taken that decision, a decision revealed during a couple of phone calls.

Jay Carney, Amazon’s top policy executive, was quoted by Reuters as telling New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (who had been in favour of the Queens campus) that it would not go ahead with its plans.

Carney then told New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio the same shortly after.

The company said the decision came together only in the last 48 hours, made by its senior leadership team and Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, chief executive and the richest person in the world.

Gianaris has reportedly blamed Amazon for the decision to drop New York.

“Amazon never showed willingness to look seriously at the concerns that were raised,” he said.

Think you know all about Amazon? Try our quiz!</s>NEW YORK — Amazon’s decision to walk away from New York City could scare off other tech companies considering moving to or expanding in the city.

That’s according to experts analyzing the e-commerce giant’s sudden cancellation of plans to build a massive headquarters in Queens. The decision on Thursday wipes out 25,000 promised jobs in a city that wants to be seen as the Silicon Valley of the East Coast.

Amazon abandoned the plan amid pushback from politicians who were angry about nearly $3 billion in tax breaks and the company’s anti-union stance.

Julie Samuels is executive director of industry group Tech: NYC. She says the city is “playing with fire” with regard to the message it sends to companies that want to come to New York and expand to New York.</s>Amazon announced today that it will not open a second corporate headquarters in New York but is still moving forward with plans for Arlington, Virginia.

“After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens,” Amazon stated in a press release.

“For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term.”

In the process of searching for its HQ2 location, Amazon said it would invest $5 billion USD ($6.62 billion CAD) and create approximately 50,000 jobs. Amazon was expected to receive up to $1.2 billion USD ($1.59 billion CAD) in tax credits through New York State’s ‘Excelsior’ program, as well as an additional $325 million USD ($430.55 million CAD) as a cash grant from the ‘Empire State Development’ fund.

Toronto Mayor John Tory recently stated that he’s open to Amazon opening HQ2 in Toronto.

“I’ll just say I’ve communicated with the people of Amazon that we’re still here, they know that,” he stated. “My message to them has continuously been we’d be delighted to have any aspect of Amazon’s operations here including part of their head office.”

Toronto was one of the 20 finalists selected for consideration for Amazon’s second headquarters but eventually came up short.

Amazon says it doesn’t intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time, noting, “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.”</s>(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc will not move forward with plans to build a headquarters in New York after rising opposition from local politicians, the third most-valuable public U.S. company said in on Thursday.

Amazon’s search for a second headquarters, which it described as HQ2, was deemed a massive, year-long public relations success, garnering worldwide publicity and interest from cities across the United States.

But its choice of New York ran into immediate criticism in the U.S. financial capital from potential neighbors in the Queens neighborhood it chose and for billions of dollars in tax breaks.

People briefed on the decision said Amazon had made the decision early Thursday after intense talks starting Wednesday and amid rising concerns about the small vocal minority. The people said Amazon will not shift any of the planned jobs to Tennessee or Virginia but plans to grow its existing network of locations.

Amazon had planned to have 700 employees in New York as part of the HQ2 project by the end of the year and did not plan to hit 25,000 in Queens for 10 years.

The company said it will not reopen the search process “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.”

The company had begun considering alternatives last week. The online retailer has not yet acquired any land for the project, which would make it easy to scrap its plans, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The proposal ran into opposition from local politicians who opposed the $2.8-billion in incentives promised to Amazon in a deal secretly negotiated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The company said, “for Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term.”

Newly-elected Congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the more high-profile critics of the deal from the Democratic Party’s leftward flank.

“Can everyday people come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the world’s biggest corporations?” she wrote on Twitter last week. “Yes, they can.”

Some residents in the neighborhood, once a scruffy haunt of artists that has rapidly gentrified with a burst of recent high-rise development, had also opposed the plan.

Long-time residents feared being forced out by rising rents and untenable pressure on already overburdened subway and sewage systems.

Cuomo was a staunch advocate of the project, touting not only the jobs it would create but the long-term tax revenues it would generate.

Hours before the announcement, Amazon officials in New York betrayed no knowledge of the deal’s cancellation when they met with local community members on Thursday morning, said Kenny Greenberg, a neon artist and member of Long Island City’s community board.

“Either they are really good poker players or they were not aware,” Greenberg said of the Amazon representatives. “There was no hint of this at all.”

Greenberg said he had been open to Amazon’s arrival if it had led to improvements in infrastructure, but that “unanswered questions” continued to mount as time went on.

The meeting with Amazon officials had been held to answer concerns from the community about labor conditions for Amazon’s warehouse and delivery workers and the company’s opposition to labor unions.

One of the city’s most powerful private-sector unions, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said the company’s abrupt exit confirmed its criticisms.

“Rather than addressing the legitimate concerns that have been raised by many New Yorkers Amazon says you do it our way or not at all, we will not even consider the concerns of New Yorkers – that’s not what a responsible business would do,” union spokeswoman Chelsea Connor said in a statement.

Chicago, Miami and Newark are among the passed-over finalists that have expressed interest in another chance to become the home of an Amazon project that could bring 25,000 jobs. Nashville, Tennessee, which was awarded a 5,000-person center, also said it was open to taking on a bigger role should New York withdraw from consideration.

Shares of Amazon were down 0.3 percent after the announcement.</s>NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasted no time on Thursday in calling Amazon’s decision to scrap plans to build a major New York outpost with nearly $3 billion in city and state incentives a big victory for progressive politicians.

The democratic socialist congresswoman has become the face of the Democratic Party’s ascendant left wing, thanks in part to her upset victory last year in a district near the proposed Amazon.com Inc development.

“Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

Amazon blamed local opposition for its abrupt reversal, which some saw as the latest evidence of the progressive movement’s surging influence ahead of the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.

“They have shown sufficient power to back off the largest corporation in the world,” Douglas Muzzio, a professor at Baruch College in New York and an expert on city politics and public opinion. “They killed Amazon, the biggest beast around.”

Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has made anti-corporate criticism a key tenet of her 2020 presidential campaign, called the subsidies “billions in taxpayer bribes” and asked on Twitter, “How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?”

Amazon had already been a favored target for some left-wing politicians due to its dominance of online shopping and reputation for imposing difficult work conditions on warehouse workers. The company has defended its practices and last year raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federally mandated level.

But since Amazon announced plans for its so-called HQ2 in 2017 and began soliciting bids from hundreds of U.S. cities, the political environment in both New York and the country has shifted significantly.

Last fall, Democrats swept to victory in the U.S. House of Representatives, buoyed by left-wing energy and animus toward Republican U.S. President Donald Trump. In New York, Democrats took control of the state Senate from Republicans for the first time in a decade.

Democratic leaders in the state Senate then nominated Michael Gianaris, whose district includes the proposed Long Island City Amazon site, to a little-known state board that could have vetoed the project.

Gianaris, a Democrat, was a vocal critic of the billions in subsidies offered to Amazon despite initially calling on the company to consider New York.

“This was a shakedown, pure and simple,” Gianaris told reporters on Thursday.

Critics of the deal questioned why the third-most valuable company in the United States – with a chief executive, Jeff Bezos, who ranks as the world’s wealthiest man – required that level of public funding, including tax breaks and grant money.

Amazon also faced anti-gentrification sentiment in a city where income inequality and a lack of affordable housing have become major concerns. Some labor leaders opposed the deal unless Amazon agreed not to oppose unionization efforts, a position that the company representatives rejected.

Still, public polling suggested the deal, which Amazon said would eventually create at least 25,000 jobs, was fairly popular among New Yorkers.

Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, an enthusiastic backer of the project, faced outrage from left-wing activists who questioned how he could defend the subsidies while staying true to his liberal principles.

But he and Governor Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat who spent the last year burnishing his own progressive bona fides while running for another term, had argued that the deal’s job creation benefits far outweighed any cost.

In a statement, Cuomo cast blame on a “small group of politicians” he accused of putting political interests ahead of their constituents’ needs.

De Blasio, by contrast, put the blame on Amazon for refusing to address local concerns.

“We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world,” he said in a statement. “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity.”</s>LONG ISLAND CITY, New York — It's Valentine's Day in New York, but love was not in the air when it comes to the city's relationship with Amazon.

On Thursday, Amazon announced it was abandoning plans to build a headquarters in Queens. The deal had faced major backlash from some New York activists and lawmakers, who slammed the $3 billion in tax incentives offered by the city and contended that the massive tech company moving in could worsen gentrification and the city's already struggling infrastructure.

BuzzFeed News went to Long Island City, the neighborhood where Amazon was supposed to move in, to ask its residents, as well as some anti-Amazon protesters, to share their messages to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Amazon cancels its New York City headquarters plans, citing opposition from activists and local politicians.