Amazon has canceled plans to build a second headquarters in New York City, following pushback from residents and local lawmakers who were concerned about what the influx of high-skill, high-paying jobs would do to an area that’s already facing fast gentrification. “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 wrote in a statement this morning. Amazon said it is canceling the plans because a “number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence.” Amazon does not plan to search for another HQ2 location, but it will move forward with its existing plans to open major campuses in Northern Virginia and Nashville. It will also continue to expand its existing presence in New York throughout other boroughs. The plans for Amazon to move into Queens were largely hashed out in secret, without input from local lawmakers. There was immediate backlash after the deal was announced, in part because of the major concessions that New York agreed to give Amazon to entice the company to move in. That included up to $1.5 billion in incentives in exchange for creating 25,000 jobs. Amazon had promised $2.5 billion in investment. Residents and local lawmakers were concerned that those jobs wouldn’t go to the people currently living in Queens, but would instead attract outside talent who would move in, drive up costs, and push out long-time residents. Even Amazon’s interest in moving to Queens had been enough to drive sales of expensive homes and apartments, sometimes sight-unseen, according to The Wall Street Journal. Without local support, Amazon could have found itself tied up in legal battles and arguing with zoning boards just to get development started. That could have delayed the project, and worse for Amazon, lengthen what had already turned into a bad PR move. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week it would be “governmental malpractice” for state lawmakers to oppose the deal after reports came out that the company was reconsidering. Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had both been proponents of the deal and worked together to court Amazon. The backlash has not let up since the deal was first announced in November. In recent weeks, lawmakers have described Amazon as uncaring and a bad cultural fit for New York. “They are anti-union. They have no concern about the impact they might have on communities they join,” state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents Astoria, Queens, said last week, according to Newsday. “Amazon is just take, take, take and doesn’t give a damn about the communities it destroys in the process.” Amazon’s complete statement is below:<doc-sep>[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from lawmakers, progressive activists and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives. The decision was an abrupt turnabout by Amazon after a much-publicized search for a second headquarters, which had ended with its announcement in November that it would open two new sites — one in Queens, with more than 25,000 jobs, and another in Virginia. Amazon’s retreat was a blow to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, damaging their effort to further diversify the city’s economy by making it an inviting location for the technology industry. The agreement to lure Amazon to Long Island City, Queens, had stirred intense debate in New York about the use of public subsidies to entice wealthy companies, the rising cost of living in gentrifying neighborhoods, and the city’s very identity.<doc-sep>Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.53% abandoned its $2.5 billion plan to build a New York City headquarters, undoing one of the country’s biggest economic-development deals because it said it was troubled by growing political opposition to subsidies to one of the world’s richest companies. The move reverses Amazon’s very public, yearlong sweepstakes that sparked bids from more than 200 locales around the country and left Northern Virginia and New York City the winners. The retreat, less than a week after news that the retailing and computer services powerhouse was having second thoughts, will cost New York 25,000 potential jobs on a new campus that was to be located in Long Island City, Queens, across the East River from Manhattan. Amazon had agreed to spend up to $2.5 billion to build the new campus and bring at least 25,000 workers to the location over the next decade. In exchange, New York City and the state offered $3 billion in tax incentives. Newsletter Sign-up Technology A weekly digest of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ's Personal Tech gurus. PREVIEW The deal’s detractors, including some state and city elected officials, called it corporate welfare and opposed Amazon’s antiunion stance and resistance to organizing its New York employees. Some 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,” Amazon said, despite majority support from local residents. The decision caught the deal’s biggest backers—New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats—by surprise. Mr. Cuomo had just left the newsroom of the New York Daily News in lower Manhattan when the announcement came. It wasn’t clear if Amazon had given him advance notice of its decision. Mr. de Blasio said he received a phone call from an Amazon executive Thursday morning, right before the news was announced. “No warning, no dialogue, just a fait accompli,” he said. “I had had a conversation with a senior Amazon official 48 hours ago, and there was no indication of this kind of problem.” Earlier this week, Amazon touted polls showing the majority of New Yorkers supported the new headquarters, and its executives continued to meet with local and state officials. On Thursday at 8 a.m., two Amazon executives who had been working on the project met with top aides to Messrs. Cuomo and de Blasio and a group of community leaders who had been tapped to give input on the project. People at the meeting said it lasted until 9:40 a.m., with Amazon executives fielding questions from attendees. “There was no indication whatsoever that they were pulling out of the deal,” said Jose Ortiz Jr., a member of the community advisory group who was there. By noon, Amazon was out. With the search, Amazon had hoped to showcase its ability to create jobs and help local economies. It said Thursday it wouldn’t restart the process and hunt for a new city, and instead would add jobs in other offices around the country, including Seattle. Its plans to open a second headquarters in northern Virginia are proceeding and received state approval last week. New apartment buildings, left, and an old warehouse, right, in Long Island City. Some government officials were worried Amazon might abandon plans to create 25,000 jobs and invest $2.5 billion. Photo: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press After months of public hearings and growing opposition in New York, the nomination of Democratic state Sen. Mike Gianaris to a seat on the state’s Public Authorities Control Board, where he could have ultimately vetoed state action on the project, helped doom the company’s plans, people familiar with the matter said. Pro-union comments by Mr. de Blasio last week also played a role, they said. Ultimately the Amazon team led by Chief Executive Jeff Bezos decided to pull the plug, people familiar with the matter said. The move is straight out of the executive’s usual playbook—demonstrated last week, with his missive on alleged blackmail by the National Enquirer—to take a bitter pill quickly that will pay off in the future. “Amazon thinks long term,”“This is a short-term loss, and yeah, there could be some short-term damage,” one of the people familiar with the process said. But that is better than continuing to get beat up for years, the person said. Mr. Cuomo issued a statement Thursday touting the project’s benefits and blaming Democrats in the New York state Senate. “A small group of politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community—which poll after poll showed overwhelmingly supported bringing Amazon to Long Island City—the state’s economic future and the best interests of the people of this state,” Mr. Cuomo said. “The New York State Senate has done tremendous damage. They should be held accountable for this lost economic opportunity.” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement that Amazon “threw away” the opportunity. “You have to be tough to make it in New York City,” he said. Some New York progressive politicians crowed after the deal’s collapse. “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,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat who represents parts of western Queens, wrote on Twitter. Amazon in November said it would split its so-called HQ2 operations between Virginia and New York, partly to ensure it could recruit enough tech talent. While the northern Virginia site was well-received, critics of the New York location quickly emerged. Mr. Cuomo and city officials had assured Amazon during the highly secretive process the deal would move forward with little resistance, according to people familiar with the matter. But Amazon immediately tapped into antibusiness sentiment. The public image of Big Tech had begun to sour over the course of Amazon’s search, amid increasing concerns about its influence and reach. New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson organized hearings to examine the closed-door negotiations between Amazon and state and city officials that sealed the deal.<doc-sep>Amazon (AMZN) said on Thursday it’s cancelling plans to build one of its headquarters in New York City’s Long Island City neighborhood in Queens following local opposition to the move. The cancellation will not only impact the city by depriving it of the company’s 25,000 proposed jobs, but it could also have a chilling effect on the region’s technology scene. “I think the big concern is that Amazon’s decision today does make New York less attractive for tech companies going forward,” said Julie Samuels, executive director of Tech:NYC an industry trade group that promotes tech jobs and policy and was founded by companies including Yahoo Finance parent Verizon Media. “And I think we are going to have a lot of work to do to sure that up.” With more than 300,000 tech jobs in New York already, the industry certainly isn’t going to collapse in Amazon’s absence. But it won’t help the city’s image as an up-and-coming tech hub, either. Damaging for New York’s reputation Amazon spent more than a year hunting for a location for its HQ2, soliciting bids from cities across the country. When the protracted search finally ended, the company announced that it would split its HQ2 between New York and Crystal City in Arlington, Va. Amazon’s decision to cancel its move into New York followed weeks of campaigning by local and state politicians who felt that the proposed $3 billion in tax breaks offered to the company were far too high, especially for a firm run by the richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos. Amazon’s new home in Long Island City would have been right across from Cornell University’s Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island. The announcement that Amazon was to open up a massive campus in New York was followed by news that Google (GOOG, GOOGL) would be expanding its own presence in the city, and that Apple (AAPL) would be hiring additional employees for its own city-based efforts. Neither of those companies are expected to change their plans. Story continues While Amazon might not be building its HQ2 in New York, Google already has a significant presence in the city. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Adding Amazon to the city’s list of tech heavyweights was seen as a way to make New York City a more significant rival to Silicon Valley, and bring along additional tech firms in the e-commerce giant’s wake. Amazon’s reversal could potentially do the opposite. “It definitely damages the reputation and attractiveness of the city for this kind of talent,” said Bhushan Sethi, joint global leader for PricewaterhouseCooper’s people and organization practice. “I’d say it’s not good news,” Sethi added. “What we’ve learned about tech talent is they like to go where the ecosystem is. They saw that in Silicon Valley, and we were starting to see investments and decisions like that here. This makes the city less attractive to tech firms and tech talent.” There are still plenty of tech jobs in the city Job seekers who live in the city, however, won’t be left high and dry with Amazon skipping town. According to Drew Sussberg, vice president of job recruitment firm JobSpring Partners, there are still plenty of opportunities available for people looking for jobs in the tech industry. “While Amazon is a very attractive player in the community, they are one of many players,” Sussberg said. “So I don’t think it’s going to derail someone’s motivation to move to New York City because Amazon’s not going to Long Island City.” If Amazon did end up moving in, Sussberg admits, it could have sent wages for tech jobs skyrocketing in New York. “The salaries in New York are high — they’re not quite Bay Area high yet — but I think you were going to see a massive inflation in salary in an already competitive market with Amazon coming,” he said. It’s not as though New York City employers dodged a bullet, though, since salaries for tech jobs will continue to increase, but it’s a reprieve from a huge jump. Samuels, meanwhile, admits that while the city will continue to see job growth in the tech sector regardless of Amazon’s decision, cancelling plans does hurt the number of available opportunities. “What we were talking about with the Amazon jobs was a unique opportunity,” Samuels said. “So to the extent that job growth will continue to be incremental, that’s great and we want to incentivize that. But it’s a real missed opportunity to go from between 25,000 and 40,000 jobs to zero.” More from Dan: Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@oath.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley. Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.finance.yahoo.com/<doc-sep>
TOPSHOT - The US Capitol is seen in Washington, DC on January 22, 2018 after the US Senate reached a deal to reopen the federal government, with Democrats accepting a compromise spending bill. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) See Amazon's new wearable it says can tell if you're stressed out Dozens of AmazonBasics product are flagged as dangerous, but many are still being sold Dr. Michael Pecht of the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering looks at an AmazonBasics microwave from a customer who said it caught on fire. Ever receive a package you didn't order? It could be a scam Andy Jassy will be Amazon's CEO. In 2019, CNN asked him if he wanted the job In an interview with CNN in 1999, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he was surprised by Amazon's success. An Amazon.com Inc. delivery driver carries boxes into a van outside of a distribution facility on February 2, 2021 in Hawthorne, California. Jeff Bezos said February 1, 2021, he would give up his role as chief executive of Amazon later this year as the tech and e-commerce giant reported a surge in profit and revenue in the holiday quarter. The announcement came as Amazon reported a blowout holiday quarter with profits more than doubling to $7.2 billion and revenue jumping 44 percent to $125.6 billion. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images) B25_25594_R James Bond (Daniel Craig) prepares to shoot in NO TIME TO DIE, an EON Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios film Credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Protesters gather in Long Island City to say "No" to the Amazon "HQ2" decision on November 14, 2018 in Long Island City, New York. - It's exciting for some, worrisome for others: The arrival of a massive headquarters of technology giant Amazon in two East Coast communities is certain to bring huge changes. Amazon announced Tuesday after a yearlong search that it would split its "HQ2" between Arlington, Virginia, outside the US capital, and the Long Island City neighborhood in the New York borough of Queens. (Photo by Don EMMERT / AFP) (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN Business) — Amazon is ditching its plans to build a new headquarters in New York after facing backlash from members of the community. “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,” Jodi Seth, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement. In the statement, Amazon noted that “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.” Follow live updates from CNN Business on this developing story Amazon selected New York City and Northern Virginia in November to split duty as its second headquarters (nicknamed HQ2) after a year-long search. Each city was expected to have more than 25,000 workers over time. A political firestorm The new headquarters was initially framed by top New York politicians including Governor Andrew Cuomo as a tremendous job creation opportunity that could benefit the broader New York region. All at once, it seemed to cement New York City as a technology hub that could truly rival Silicon Valley. After the deal was announced, however, critics blasted the $1.525 billion in incentives New York offered to lure the tech behemoth and worried that it would soon lead to longtime residents being priced out of their homes. Protesters took to the streets in Long Island City, criticizing the deal for being bad for taxpayers and the neighborhood. Amazon’s decision on Thursday was met with a mix of disappointment and jabs from politicians frustrated by the company’s decision to walk away rather than engage with the community’s concerns. “You have to be tough to make it in New York City. We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a tweet Thursday. “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity.” Carolyn Maloney, a New York congresswoman, said she was “disappointed” New York would lose out on 25,000 jobs and “hundreds of millions of dollars in new investments.” “The deal could have been improved.