It’s strange to hear that Amazon has decided not to locate its headquarters in New York City after all, even after doing so was supposedly decided upon. Those employees would have loved living there, especially while making average salaries of $150k a year! Of course those are very substantial salaries, even for New York City.
The fact that some politicians were complaining about Amazon’s move to New York was cited by Amazon as their reason for deciding not to go through with it, but really it was mostly just a few inconsequential politicians who were actually opposed to it. For example the leftist extremist Ocasio-Cortez was loudly complaining about tax breaks being offered to the company to relocate there, despite the fact that the company would have brought huge tax revenues to the city nonetheless.
I lived in the Sunnyside neighborhood next to Long Island City in Queens for a while. It is a great area that is adjacent to midtown Manhattan. I’ve heard that there was an apartment buying frenzy in Long Island City immediately after the announcement that Amazon was going to move there. I’m sure that some people who put their apartments on the market at just that moment got premium prices for them. And some people who bought apartments hoping to cash in on Amazon might be regretting it a bit now, although that is hardly a bad location to own real estate.
In any event, the idea that Amazon moving to Long Island City would have “gentrified” it as Ocasio-Cortez was claiming is ridiculous— that area has already been “gentrified” many decades ago, it is right in the heart of New York City! Rent controls are already in place, so what would the problem have been?
A view from Sunnyside, Queens in a video that I made from my rooftop in 2001. Manhattan looks rather far away in the video, but that is its southern tip.
.. Midtown Manhattan is actually much closer to where I was. This is a stock photo, but it is pretty much exactly the view that I had from the rooftop of my building. I was situated where I could see almost every bridge on the East River from that viewpoint, especially at night. See a detail of the image.
