[NYguy]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/...land-city.html

What to Expect When Amazon Arrives in Long Island City

By Justin Davidson

...after dangling the transformative power of a new corporate behemoth, Amazon chose the two cities where its presence will be noticed least. In New York, especially, the number of tech jobs has been rising in the city for well over a decade, so another 25,000 will just sharpen the curve. Last year’s opening of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, a quick ferry ride from Long Island City, made the Queens waterfront an obvious candidate for the sector’s new home base. As it happens, the neighborhood has an oversupply of new apartments and new office space, with more of both on the way, so Amazon could almost move in tomorrow and let its entire workforce commute on foot. Or, as Angela Merkel keeps telling Germans worried about being overwhelmed by new arrivals: Wir schaffen das. We’ve got this.

A few consequences are obvious. Long Island City will be awash with tech types who are insufferably young and highly paid. Also with dogs (6,000 of them show up at the Amazon office in Seattle every day). The price of lunch, rent, and laundry will continue to rise. Waterfront parks will get more crowded. Less predictably, a new Amazon campus could also trigger some new transit patterns that exclude Manhattan completely.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/insi...ry?id=58997398

An inside look at Amazon's HQ2 visits to NYC


By SOO YOUN
Nov 7, 2018

When Amazon officials visited New York's Long Island City as a potential second headquarters, they were impressed with its "Seattle"-like neighborhood vibe and the "scale and infrastructure" it had to offer.

Long Island City is a residential and industrial neighborhood in western Queens that has been transformed into a hipster enclave. MoMA's PS1 contemporary art space and the iconic Silvercup Studios anchor the creative scene, accompanied by craft beer and cocktail bars. High-rise apartment buildings have altered the skyline, as younger New Yorkers opt for a view of, instead of from, Manhattan.

Although no deal has been inked, an announcement is expected soon, possibly as early as this week. After a competitive nationwide search, the company is reportedly choosing two cities as its new headquarters.

The dual HQ2 is in line with what Amazon has been saying all along: one urban campus, one suburban. Very few places can supply the talent pool Amazon requires for these new 50,000 jobs, according to the source. It's also assumed that those jobs will be split evenly between the two selected cities.

Beginning in October 2017, New York City submitted a proposal featuring four locations: Long Island City, Manhattan's Midtown West/Hudson Yards, downtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn Tech Triangle.

In January, the company narrowed its list of potential cities to 20.

On the first visit to New York, Amazon execs toured two locations: Hudson Yards and Long Island City. The problem with Hudson Yards was that it wasn't a real neighborhood yet despite its development potential, the source said.

In July, Amazon officials came back for a second visit but only saw Long Island City. Company representatives took a ferry tour at sunset, a Citi Bike tour and met with Andy Byford, the CEO of the New York City Transit Authority. Byford reassured the company about the reliability of the subway system, particularly the problem-ridden 7 train, the source said.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amaz...-split-2018-11

Amazon subtly hinted that it could have 2 HQ2s from the beginning

Dennis Green

Amazon may have been considering placing its second headquarters, which it calls HQ2, in two places from the beginning.

That news has surprised many observers, as Amazon had not publicly raised the possibility that HQ2 could be put in two different places, or even split between an area wider than one metropolitan area.

But a closer read reveals that Amazon had left itself some wiggle room in the form of legal language at the bottom of its original request for proposals last September.

There, in all italics, is a disclaimer that reads (emphasis ours):

"This RFP is only an invitation for proposals, the substance of which may be memorialized in a binding, definitive agreement or agreements if any proposal is selected. Amazon may select one or more proposals and negotiate with the parties submitting such proposals before making an award decision,or it may select no proposals and enter into no agreement."

Once thought to be typical boilerplate legal language that would protect Amazon if it didn't go through with the HQ2 project for whatever reason, it takes on a much different meaning in light of the recent reports.

It seems possible that splitting HQ2 could have been an option that Amazon was considering since the beginning, when it embarked on this project more than a year ago.