Thread by @bansisharma

1. Amazon Looking for Office Space in Manhattan
Amazon’s renewed focus on Manhattan so soon after dropping its plans for Queens is an apparent rebuke to the politicians who helped scuttle Amazon’s NY HQ plans, including US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sources said.

2. NY Post reports that Amazon is now looking for 250,000-square-foot space in Manhattan, which is a far cry from the 4 million-square-foot campus it was looking to build in Long Island City, Queens.

3. Queens residents overwhelmingly supported plans for 25,000 new jobs with an average wage of $150,000, despite protests from Ocasio-Cortez and other politicians over $3.2 billion in capital grants and tax incentives, polls have shown.

4. One reason is that every job that Amazon brought to the area would have had a multiplier effect on five or more other local jobs, including at local coffee shops, dry cleaners and food franchises, said Alfredo Ortiz, president & CEO of the Job Creators Network.

5. Manhattan, by contrast, will barely register the growth, experts said.

“Frankly, that kind of activity gets lost in Manhattan,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for New York City.

6. The Long Island City deal would also have seen Amazon invest in a 600-seat public school; a workforce development and training space; an artists’ workspace; and 149,650 square feet of public open space, among other projects — all of which is now lost, thanks to @AOC.

The End