De Blasio says city erred on Amazon campus deal

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city and state mishandled the deal to attract Amazon to Long Island City. AP photo/John Locher.

By David Brand

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city and state mishandled the deal to attract Amazon to Long Island City amid a nationwide competition among municipalities.

De Blasio told NY1 reporter Bobby Cuza that Amazon “cheated the people of New York City” by walking away from the deal to build a corporate campus in Long Island City — a project known as “HQ2.” 

In retrospect, he said, the city should have approached the project differently. He specifically criticized a “race to the bottom” among cities vying for the tech giant to establish a campus in exchange for significant subsidies.

“I wish we had figured out a way to push back against what is a broken model and kind of a rigged system to begin with,” de Blasio said. “What I think we need to do going forward is take the model that we started here which is no retention subsidies and deepen that approach and start limiting them more and more.”

Amazon said the project would have generated 25,000 new jobs, though critics of the proposal questioned whether those jobs would benefit longtime residents and low-income New Yorkers. 

The online retail and internet services giant, which possesses a vast data repository, recently agreed to expand its offices in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards. Amazon also operates a warehouse in Staten Island and is planning to build a new site in Woodside.