I know Long Island city. I lived in that area for a while. My wife worked there (at a tech start up that ultimately moved because it got too expensive for operations). It is gentrifying: Lots of condos and high rises. I know someone who was going to sell a substantial amount of land there to amazon. It was that or condos.
And anyone who lives and works in the Long Island City is shocked that the political clowns in NYC chased away Amazon and tanked the entire future for Long Island City residents. While the area has been gentrifying and condos/high rises continue being built - it still faces significant challenges. Landing Amazon represented a huge boost to the prospects of Long Island City which has endured a lengthy struggle just to arrive where they are today from their dismal history as a gritty industrial district where the poor lived.
Those democrats not so completely off the rails left are rightly concerned about Cortez and her idiot following. There is a reason that she and her kind don't understand what happened. They don't want to understand basic economics. They have no interest in job creation, or job loss for that matter. Their interest is in wealth redistribution, period.
Well they mentioend where they were going to build it had some tenements and needed influx of capital.
It’s an area near where the high rise condos are going up. If hq2 doesn’t go there, it will become condos. Already the blue collar businesses were getting priced out. Hq2 was going to hasten the inevitable.
I thought hq2 was a good thing. I was making a point about the area. But I am not a resident there and my wife no longer works in LIC. So I don’t know what the residents want. Clearly you know the politics of LIC as well as the politics of North Carolina.
My Mom grew up in the Long Island City area of Queens. I still have members of her side of the family up there.
People here seem to be missing the point that cities like Toronto and I presume NYC are essentially at capacity and likely need significant new infrastructure and rebuilds to bring in large employers. Toronto took a different tact on Amazon, said we'd love to have you but no incentives, we'll be ok either way. Many have said a company like Amazon can actually inhibit other tech firms from succeeding because of a new shortage of talent. I don't know of that's true but I do doubt that NYC will struggle because Amazon didn't move in with the incentives being offered.
All of NYC will not suffer but the area to get the focus will suffer not getting it and those people might vote different in next election cycle if their own reps pushed away jobs and investments.
I am not sure this capacity argument flies coming from lefties. Many parts of CA are at physical capacity. Traffic is crazy in some areas. Class rooms are going way above recommended capacities... Why are people arguing we should bring in more people? If educated and employed workers and businesses are not needed because we are at capacity... why are we bringing in more unemployed people and giving them handouts? If business needs to be halted until they can be accommodated... should we not be doing the same thing with immigration. Lets take care of the people already here... and send aid to places with lower costs of living.