Seen on Twitter:

The NYC subway was ill,
Affordable housing near nil.
Officials there knew
The wise thing to do:
Give Amazon $1.5 bil.

They are expanding their footprint in Wilmington, OH, at the airpark where DHL folded a few years ago. Good for the local economy.

Article here.

The comments section is interesting.

6 Senators now. That should be enough for most reasonable contingencies.

This whole thing irks me, though I'm struggling to explain why. I guess the dog and pony show of cities scrambling to put together proposals and parade in front of Bezos & Co., only to see the selection made primarily on the basis of the best financial deal strikes me as corporate bullying.

PDX put together a proposal. I was not involved but know several people who were. They were never really in the running (too close to SEA, for starters), but had they known that the decision would come down to cold, hard cash, I think everyone would have turned their attention to other projects.

I also think that this pattern of extremely wealthy corporations demanding that cities give them massive tax breaks and other financial incentives to move to their area is poor policy. "The rich get richer" and all that. If you think of the major economic movers and shakers in the USA, they all started as a good idea, and a good idea transcends geography for the most part. Bellevue was an affluent suburb of Seattle before M'soft. Silicon Valley was plum orchards. Austin/Round Rock, Texas was a patch of blue hippiedom in greater red TX.

So yeah, Amazon had a good idea and pushed it to the hilt. Why do we have to fund its expansion? Will the jobs really pay enough for these cities to recoup their investment? Or is it another case of huge promises that fail to materialize.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Seen on Twitter:

The NYC subway was ill,
Affordable housing near nil.
Officials there knew
The wise thing to do:
Give Amazon $1.5 bil.

Son, James is distraught. The L train will be shutting down in a few months. Masses of Brooklynites will no longer have ready access to Manhattan for jobs, etc. He thinks it's part of a ploy to purge low income people and get them to abandon their rent-controlled and rent stabilized housing so older buildings will be razed and new, high priced apartment buildings will come in for the influx of tech workers. Gentrification is already happening in Bushwick, and with the loss of convenient transportation, it could expedite the transition.

quote:

Originally posted by kathyk:

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Seen on Twitter:

The NYC subway was ill,
Affordable housing near nil.
Officials there knew
The wise thing to do:
Give Amazon $1.5 bil.

Son, James is distraught. The L train will be shutting down in a few months. Masses of Brooklynites will no longer have ready access to Manhattan for jobs, etc. He thinks it's part of a ploy to purge low income people and get them to abandon their rent-controlled and rent stabilized housing so older buildings will be razed and new, high priced apartment buildings will come in for the influx of tech workers. Gentrification is already happening in Bushwick, and with the loss of convenient transportation, it could expedite the transition.

Wow. It's almost like the Trump Crime Family has taken over.

They’vr been talking about the need to close the L since it was damaged by Hurricane Sandy.


That’s a pretty elaborate plot.

Are they closing it for repairs or are they closing it permanently?

Repairs. And they announced it literally years in advance.

Run down of Repairs I guess the post-Sandy repairs have been a bandaid waiting to unravel.

And Ii get your point about J's musings, Jon, but you've got to wonder what it's going to do to an already really stressed housing market.

quote:

New York’s housing market is already tight. The share of housing units available to low-income households fell 12.9 percent between 2006 and 2016, according to a 2017 report from NYU’s Furman Center. The city said in September that it has lost more than 400,000 affordable housing units since 2005.

Atlantic Article

Why Amazon Is Caught in an Unexpected Brawl in New York
https://nyti.ms/2E7UyGQ

This is rich:

quote:

“Amazon is big, but it’s not bigger than New York. They don’t get to tell us what to do.”

The US is big. Queens doesn't get to tell Amazon what to do either. I'm sure we would welcome Amazon on the peninsula if they wanted to double down in VA.

Re the L train, then there's Gov. Cuomo's contention that it can be repaired rather simply and with only minor nighttime shutdowns. I don't know where the plans stand at the moment, but it's a serious proposal.