Current Events > Amazon pauses construction on HQ2 in Virginia

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/silviakillings/status/1631671176689852417

Remember how this project's critics were treated like kooks? The heat AOC took for opposing it being in NYC?

Why are they pausing it?

More info is needed, or copy and paste the article since it is blocked.

Come in, destroy a bunch of shit, fuck up the roads, half build the project then bail. Sounds like corporate America.

John Schoettler, Amazons real estate chief, confirmed the pause in a statement to Bloomberg News. Schoettler said the company remains committed to Arlington, Virginia, where by 2030 Amazon has committed to spend $2.5 billion and hire some 25,000 workers. But the construction moratorium will delay the online retailers full arrival at its biggest real estate project, and could create headaches for local developers, as well as construction and service workers banking on Amazons rapid expansion.

The first phase of the campus that the company calls HQ2 is nearing completion and will be finished and occupied as planned. Amazon, which says it now has more than 8,000 workers in the area, expects to start moving those employees to two newly completed office towers in a 2.1-million-square-foot development called Metropolitan Park, near the Pentagon and Washington National Airport, in June.

The delay affects a larger phase across the street. It calls for three, 22-story office towers and the 350-foot-tall (107-meter) Helix, a corporate conference center and indoor garden designed to echo the Spheres, plant-filled orbs at the heart of the companys Seattle headquarters. Arlington officials granted the 2.8-million-square-foot project, called PenPlace, its most important approval in April.

According to the actual article they still have their commitment to the state and a full third of the employees that the new headquarters will be bringing in have already been hired. They're just delaying construction on the other part of campus, but I'm sure when you wrote this topic you were definitely talking about the conference center and the indoor garden that's being delayed, right?

Alteres posted...

More info is needed, or copy and paste the article since it is blocked.

https://archive.ph/ah9bL

tl;dr - why build a bigass office tower, when everyone's working from home?

My thanks.

s0nicfan posted...

I'm sure when you wrote this topic you were definitely talking about the conference center and the indoor garden that's being delayed, right?

And the three office towers intended for, presumably, the other two-thirds of the workers they promised

Intro2Logic posted...

And the three office towers intended for, presumably, the other two-thirds of the workers they promised

So your argument is that AOC was right to oppose this because thus far Amazon has only brought in 8,000 more jobs and temporarily paused their indoor garden with no indication they're not going to be hiring the other 2/3 because more people can simply work from home?

But listen, I'm sure she's done a ton for her district that is way better than bringing in an HQ like this, right? Only I'm confused, because when I look up statistics for her district I see that unemployment remains as bad as it's always been. But I must be making a mistake since you seem to think she made the right call here. Maybe you can clarify.

Edit: oh, but maybe you were thinking about education since Amazon's deal with New York would have included building a tech campus and offering extremely low cost higher education to locals with a high rate of job placement in the new hq. Maybe she's done a lot to boost access to higher education in her district? I can't find any information about that either, but maybe she was just too busy tweeting to get around to it.

s0nicfan posted...

and temporarily paused their indoor garden

Deeply disingenuous to phrase things this way. Here's the article, thanks for pasting it.

s0nicfan posted...

The delay affects a larger phase across the street. It calls for three, 22-story office towers

As for Amazon's other promises: would they have come off without a hitch? How much would NYC have given up in exchange? How much did Virginia give up? Even local politicians weren't entirely sure at the time:

https://talkpoverty.org/2018/11/13/frenzy-amazons-hq2-national-embarrassment/

Both Virginia and New York offered Amazon monetary incentives in an attempt to win HQ2, as its known. Until now, the public and even some lawmakers in those states had no idea what those incentives were. And its ultimately low-income residents in both places who will pay the biggest price.
Amazons announcement included the news that it will receive $1.5 billion in tax breaks from New York, and another half a billion from Virginia, along with promises from both states to make significant infrastructure improvements. As a result, each new job that Amazon brings will cost these cities tens of thousands of dollars.

Depending on which analysis you look at, cities and states in America spend up $90 billion annually on corporate tax incentives. That category of spending has more than tripled since 1990. The theory at work is that incentives are an investment in corporations creating jobs and boosting local economies.
The evidence backing up that theory, though, is thin. In fact, most studies have found that corporate tax breaks have little to no effect on job creation or economic growth, because they mostly encourage shifting jobs from one locale to another without creating any new economic activity. (Think, for instance, of a worker who leaves her current job to take one at Amazon, or moves from Amazons Seattle headquarters to Long Island.) What these tax breaks really stimulate is politicians efforts to get re-elected, as doling them out is correlated with rising vote shares.

The secrecy surrounding the effort to woo Amazon adds insult to that injury. 238 cities responded to the corporations initial request for proposals. Only a few of them made what they offered Amazon public. Reporters and activists in several cities took their local governments to court in an effort to ascertain what they promised Amazon.

The secrecy even extended to local elected officials.My understanding is the public subsidies that are being discussed are massive in scale, a New York state senator who represents Long Island City said to CNN before Amazons announcement.

Oops, looks like your reply missed a bit. Here's the rest:

s0nicfan posted...

So your argument is that AOC was right to oppose this because thus far Amazon has only brought in 8,000 more jobs (cut bit) with no indication they're not going to be hiring the other 2/3 because more people can simply work from home?

But listen, I'm sure she's done a ton for her district that is way better than bringing in an HQ like this, right? Only I'm confused, because when I look up statistics for her district I see that unemployment remains as bad as it's always been. But I must be making a mistake since you seem to think she made the right call here. Maybe you can clarify.

Edit: oh, but maybe you were thinking about education since Amazon's deal with New York would have included building a tech campus and offering extremely low cost higher education to locals with a high rate of job placement in the new hq. Maybe she's done a lot to boost access to higher education in her district? I can't find any information about that either, but maybe she was just too busy tweeting to get around to it.

AOC was right to shit all over Amazon getting cozy with NYC. TIF and the like are just scams, of an epic level.