Submitted by irish_fellow_nyc t3_11b6ldl in nyc
Comments
Primary_Astronomer36 t1_j9z4gu1 wrote
In a nutshell
akmalhot t1_j9wm795 wrote
Random tangent, expecting a downvites. But In 5-10 years you're going to start seeing the effects. If not sooner
Kevin O'Leary today said ny/nj/Cali are not investible now - "why would we put money into high cost, corrupt areas when we can have talent pools happily working elsewhere and remotely. Big companies have been running heir back offices from cheaper states for decades, now every company can do it . Why would we keep going where doing businesses is more expensive for no reason.
We don't need centralized tech, law, engineering talent anymore either - why would I put money in NY where taxes and business costs are exorbitant and AOC is chasing away anyone who wants to bring jobs.. remember the Amazon deal? ........"
I'll add on to that - Amazon got proposed tax breaks for hitting job targets - 25k high paying direct jobs + all the support jobs in Amazon and externally to support a bise ss of that size and it's employees. .... 100 million year - there are multiple industries who gets bigger tax breaks than that every year and the are INCREAsING them this year. Where is AOC ont hose tax breaks ?.
Not to mention the 2 new schools, the 2 new job out reach training centers, green space, 2 improved subways
Glad we "got the 3 billion dollars back to spend on other things " (that money doesn't exist, because the revenue never occured that would have been given credit for .... )
Yes yes ny always survived etc - you HAD to be in NY to do business before , it's not the case anymore . Not to the same degree....
Florida finance scene going nuts.
Titan_Astraeus t1_j9y2exn wrote
Nah that Amazon stuff is bullshit. They never intended on creating 25k new jobs that was just one milestone and the additional tax benefit wasn't where they stood to gain the most.
The deal meant they could bypass city/public council approval which would have added many hoops to jump through. It gave them a sweetheart deal for a lease on prime real estate that was otherwise earmarked for affordable housing preventing amazon from getting the land they wanted without paying through the nose and angering the public. Having the city hand over the land for cheap in exchange for "more jobs" avoids those issues..
Even without the tax breaks, they would've saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Their plan was to consolidate several thousand employees already in NYC to one main campus, transfer high level employees from Seattle and then fill the remainder (a few thousand, but still nowhere near the 25k) with new local workers.
Everywhere amazon has done this before, they treat the community like shit, are almost universally disliked and fail to meet whatever job/economic promises they make. They don't care about the community or these promises, they are simply taking advantage of flaws in cities economic development policies. That is, there is no accountability when they fail to meet a target. Often these deals have no real contingencies they are based on good faith. The city is promised benefits from all these jobs and new growth in exchange for their support. Usually with a bonus if the company reaches a milestone. BUT no one ever talks about what happens if they fail to meet that target as is most common with these large corps.
It is a shitty move all around. The companies are trying to spend as little as possible. While the politicians can claim an easy win right now. It looks good to have a photo op in front of a large high profile project, the intricacies don't matter cause most people won't get into it. You know what else would create 25k jobs and stimulate economic growth in NYC? Investing in infrastructure, but you can't really have a ribbon cutting ceremony for stuff like that..
LouisSeize t1_j9z1t0s wrote
> prime real estate that was otherwise earmarked for affordable housing
No way. You actually think Plaxall was going to fill that space with "affordable housing?" Show me an article from a reputable news source that says that.
tuberosum t1_ja0mtt1 wrote
Plaxall has been trying to redevelop that site well before Amazon was even a consideration
LouisSeize t1_ja10w1j wrote
Interesting. I never knew. Thanks.
Titan_Astraeus t1_ja2u8pl wrote
Affordable housing in this case is kind of a misnomer/misleading I guess if you want to be pedantic. It doesn't mean affordable to everyone, it means relatively. Pixall owned most of that plot and had plans for new high rise buildings with 5000 units. 1500 of which would be classified as affordable housing. That doesn't mean tenement level, projects.. affordable housing has specific criteria which these units met.. so take up your issue of that definition with the city not me.
Regardless, 5000 new homes, many of which are relatively "more affordable", would greatly improve the housing situation in that area and around the city. There is a shortage, and building newer nice units for people who can afford them theoretically frees up other units for more people to move in.
akmalhot t1_j9y87yr wrote
That land is earmarked for affordable housing? Who's building affordable housing there ???? Please I'd like to know ?
The tax break was completely tied to 25000 jobs
It's been 3 years, what has been built in that space ,? What permits have been filed ?
Titan_Astraeus t1_ja2u7nu wrote
The tax break was tied to jobs yes. But the tax break wasn't the only benefit nor the biggest for Amazon. Hell, does amazon even pay taxes? Getting the land in the first place would've been a battle and they would've had to pay a lot more. Cheap real estate without public push back is what they want. Check their track record, they never meet the big milestone of x number of jobs or whatever. That is like honey dicking the public, bc the politicians and media can say 25k jobs will (potentially) be created, but there is nothing holding anyone to that number for the deal to go through.
They still get preferential treatment and save lots of money, the politicians get an easy win and probably funding or some cushy job when they're done. Meanwhile their actual plan was a few thousand new local jobs. NYC doesn't need to give companies hundreds of millions of dollars to create a few thousand new jobs. That happens organically.
Remember amazon is supposed to be all data driven too. No way that contest was real they wouldn't just randomly pick their new hq location. They had a short list of places they wanted to be and pitted cities against each other to see who would bend over backwards for them.
Affordable housing in this case is kind of a misnomer I guess if you want to be pedantic. It doesn't mean affordable to everyone, it means relatively. One company owned most of that plot and there were plans for new high rise buildings with 5000 units. 1500 of which would be classified as affordable housing. That doesn't mean tenement level, projects.. affordable housing has specific criteria which these units met.. so take up your issue of that definition with the city not me.
Regardless, 5000 new homes, many of which are relatively "more affordable", would greatly improve the housing situation in that area and around the city. There is a shortage, and building newer nice units for people who can afford them theoretically frees up other units for more people to move in.
akmalhot t1_ja315cv wrote
Did those 5000 units get built ?
> NYC doesn't need to give companies hundreds of millions of dollars to create a few thousand new jobs
If it was only a few thousand, there wooldn be no tax break
Not to mention, NYC gives TONS of tax incentives for jobs, I don't understand why Amazon , which per job was significantly less than most tax break given, really bothers you?.
> Happens organically
Are you loving under a rock? Businesses are leaving and only keeping small offices in NY, outside of finance and core tech.. except tech is more wfh .. both commercial and job paying base is being eroded and has been since before the pandemic
You isws to HAVE to have big outposts in NYC to complete for the talent and Inperson stuff, you don't need either for many industries anymore
> Does Amazon even pay taxes
Well, if they don't, then there's no tax break to be had, so no benefit anyway ?
Howard lorburg, one of NYC biggest developers > we haven't started a new project since before the pandemic in NY, it's all SE
Kevin O'Leary on Friday: NYC/NJ is now investible. Why would we put any dollars there when we're getting pushed out for creating new jobs, corruption is high, regulatory hurdles are enormous, and everyone wants handouts to get anything done .. we don't need to buy in NYC to capture the talent pool, and people want remote, so we don't need to operate there of people don't want to come there
Titan_Astraeus t1_ja3ilht wrote
Them having been built is kind of irrelevant to this deal, unless at the time you were able to tell the future. Part of why they haven't been built, yea is there was a global pandemic that totally shifted the way everything is done.. companies are leaving at an increased rate now because of something unexpected that happened afterwards, that's irrelevant to the point in that context.. and again my point is they didn't care about or need the tax break. So yea they planned a few thousand new jobs, not to get the tax break, but would still save hundreds of millions of dollars vs if they tried to purchase the land in a private sale.. as they and others have done across the country numerous times now, the tax breaks don't matter because they almost never actually reach the proposed goal.
akmalhot t1_ja3lvn3 wrote
>Irrelevant
If they were going to hit jon targets, which your confident in, they weren't going to get tax breaks. So it should have zero effect on your decision
You can't have it both ways - they aren't going to bring many jobs and also be upset about a tax break they wouldn't get > Save 100s of millions vs private sale
How is that exactly, the private landowners we're giving Amazon discounts on the land ? The workers were going to do labor for free ?
Other states have been ripping away jobs and development from the northeast through tax incentives and already existing lower taxes .
This has been a trend for many many years , it was only accelerated by the pandemic.. companies had back offices in tax and lower cost / regulatory states ...talent pool was expanding, remote was already happening prepandenic
Office occupancy was much worse than let in, we work, spaces etc occupied a lot of space
But hey y'all are getting what you want fangmula is pulling back on office space
... To be continued in a bit
Titan_Astraeus t1_ja3z3o5 wrote
Their total grants would have been close to $3billion, only half of which were contingent on reaching the jobs milestone.. I'm not arguing that your wrong about the rest, but I don't think anyone should be bending over backwards to accommodate some of the world's largest companies.. I don't feel bad for all the owners of empty office towers, I think a correction may be a good thing so instead of the dick measuring contest of trying to build the tallest and most expensive things we can maybe the city will focus on improving things for the average person rather than the 1% top earners.. it is theoretically a good deal. But with their track record and the fuckery in this city, sounds like it could go bad.
akmalhot t1_ja4n7k0 wrote
WRONG
1.3 of 1.7 billion from the state was purely contingent on reaching 25,000 employees, the remaining would scale if they exceed that number, with 40,000 to get the full 1.7 billion
Amazon also had to build 2 job training centers, a school, improve two subway strips, provide communal green space ...from that the city and state pledged 5 million each towards the job training
1.3 from the city, only part of it was not contingent on the jobs through reduced rent
k1lk1 t1_j9wqn3k wrote
Not wrong.
You either know or have paid off the right people in NYC to get a good deal as a business, and if you haven't, there's basically no reason to be here if you're a large multinational.
PointOfTheJoke t1_j9xehso wrote
Hard truth. Nyc is in the process of sewing, failure to adapt is going to be catastrophic.
k1lk1 t1_j9wqgiq wrote
> When asked why he was the best person to lead a public safety briefing and how his role differed from Sewell's, the first woman to head the department, Banks said, “that’s not a question.”
> “I won’t answer that particular question. I'm in this role because the person who was elected mayor has the authority to appoint a deputy mayor of public safety,” Banks said. “And he believed that I should be the person in this particular role. And that's why I’m in that role. End of story, bottom line.”
Boy it sure would be nice to have a city council that would bother to hold hearings on this kind of OBVIOUS grift, rather than spend its time on boutique social programs and pointless wedge issues
mowotlarx t1_j9wxoin wrote
They have a super majority and could overtake most of what Adams does. Do they? No. They don't even try. They basically do nothing most of the time and once in awhile vote for a bunch of new "task forces" that accomplish nothing and waste everyone's time.
mowotlarx t1_j9wt4ie wrote
His role is to undermine the NYPD commissioner and make sure every single "public safety" action is directly filtered down from the Mayor. That's the answer.
Eric Adams runs this city directly, he undermines and overrules everyone else he appointed or who otherwise leads the city agencies. He demands city agencies and employees override protocol and the rules to give him what he wants. He seeks extreme levels of power even Bloomberg didn't try to grasp for himself.
Meowdl21 t1_j9y4ns8 wrote
sounds very trumpy. We want a mayor not a king 😑
TeamMisha t1_j9wjoq6 wrote
Many appointees are cronyism anyways, of course some of them can't explain it lol. Look no further than the DOT commissioner. Does Ydanis have a planning degree or know about running an agency with thousands of employees? How to coordinate projects and create quality teams? Be a strong leader? I think not, based on what I see!
mowotlarx t1_j9wxub3 wrote
Ydanis by all accounts seems like a kind and likable man. But he's laughably dumb on the topic of transportation and does nothing of value but show up at events to be "the face" of DOT.
TeamMisha t1_j9x0tjc wrote
Indeed, he would have been better as the spokesperson. He and even the mayor himself, from my perspective, either ignored or underestimated what running agencies the size NYC has. Bloomberg excelled at prioritizing projects due to his business empire experience. NYCDOT alone has 5,500 employees, you need someone who understands how to run it, how to allot and manage resources, on top of at least understanding or committing to understanding urban planning and engineering. From everything I've heard, DOT right now is lacking this, and not being run efficiently, and is also hemorrhaging staff due to wider issues as well.
ketzal7 t1_j9z803t wrote
Yeah I will say he at least is pro-pedestrian and tries to push initiatives, which is better than a lot of cronies who just sit there and collect the check
PiffityPoffity t1_j9x0j34 wrote
And what a face.
haruno9 t1_j9yllxx wrote
He is a horrible mayor.
cgfn t1_j9ypvh2 wrote
The folks who voted for Adams in the primary are getting exactly what they were presented with. Why is this a surprise.
RetroZelda t1_j9wnynh wrote
is his name Jordan Shlansky?
drpvn t1_j9wyool wrote
He carries out various tasks that have been assigned to him.
spoil_of_the_cities t1_j9x3pae wrote
It's ghosts
He's the head buster
The city wants to keep this all under wraps
socialcommentary2000 t1_j9yu01x wrote
This guy is going to end up actually being what everyone thought Dinkins was, but actually wasn't. And the tragic thing is absolutely nothing quality...much less something line the banger US Open deal...will come of it.
TheLastHotBoy t1_j9z9c30 wrote
That’s because it’s motherfucking nepotism.
spicytoastaficionado t1_j9zitnq wrote
His role is public safety, duh!
mission17 t1_j9ztrn5 wrote
His job is to take on the biggest threat to this city, wokeness. /s
Jimmy_kong253 t1_ja1uh5m wrote
If can't explain it then I'm going to assume he doesn't have a role other than collecting a check
Grass8989 t1_j9wj8da wrote
No different than de Blasios appointees in “thriveNYC” and previous Mayors various “officials”.
Neoliberalism2024 t1_j9wrblx wrote
Bloomberg didn’t do shit like this
Grass8989 t1_j9wrzny wrote
Bloomberg was a special case.
orgoworgo t1_j9wir02 wrote
His role? Why it’s to collect a sweet paycheck from the taxpayers of NY, accept bribes from interest groups, and have fun partying with his good friend Eric! Now stop asking silly questions you meddlesome reporters…