Maybe it was Queens itself, but after abandoning plans to build a headquarters in Long Island City, Amazon is now said to be contemplating coming to the Big Apple after all.
The mammoth company is now reported to be searching for office space on Manhattan’s West Side. “The tech giant has been in talks with owners of two shiny new skyscrapers located just one block west of Penn Station — the newly built One Manhattan West and its soon-to-be sister project, Two Manhattan West,” sources told The New York Post. “The online retailer is seeking “at least 100,000 square feet or much more” — just to start, one well-placed source said.”
Rumor has it that Amazon personnel have their eye on a pair of office buildings situated just west of Penn Station: One Manhattan West and Two Manhattan West. The tech giant is said to be looking for something in excess of 100,000 square feet.
“That footprint is significantly smaller than the 4 million to 8 million square feet of space Amazon planned to build out for its HQ2 project,” Slate magazine has reported. “But the fact that the company is still planning to grow its New York presence without a large, specially crafted subsidy package seems to prove the basic point many of the deal’s critics made, which is that major cities with large pools of business and engineering talent do not need to stoop to corporate welfare in order to attract major tech companies, which tend to go where they can find enough employees.”
In point of fact, midtown was the first area considered when Amazon said it was searching for New York real estate. “But the tech giant went for Long Island City, where it was planning to build a 4 million square foot campus around Anable Basin,” reported ny.curbed.com. “The backlash was swift and loud, and ultimately, Amazon pulled out of the deal.
There is, the web site pointed out, “no indication that Amazon’s search for New York office space will be on par with what it had planned for HQ2: a hub for 25,000 employees, along with investments in public infrastructure and new schools, that came with the promise of billions of dollars in subsidies.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose campaign for the Democratic nomination for president is widely considered a joke, reportedly commented that he wouldn’t help Amazon expand its footprint in New York City. As a recent press conference, he noted, “It doesn’t surprise me at all but again, they’re going to have to do it on their own.”
