New York City community leaders worried about the likely impact of a major Amazon office center there are breathing a sigh of relief after Amazon announced it has canceled its plans.
Last week there were reports that Amazon was trying to negotiate further concessions on top of the $3 billion in subsidies that state and city officials had already agreed to. Today, though, Amazon released an alarmingly bitter statement blaming the cancellation on opposition from city officials. In its statement, Amazon falsely claimed its project had the support of 70 percent of city residents. In fact, the plan faced an immediate backlash from the public after the scale of the promised subsidies was revealed, with further concerns when it was learned that the new facility would probably not create any net job growth. The prospects for the project were dimmed further when Amazon made additional demands in closed-door meetings with officials.
Amazon’s change of heart was surely more influenced by a disappointing December across the retail sector than by local opposition. With future revenue in doubt, Amazon is scaling back its plans. The surest indication of this is that Amazon says it has no plans to replace the proposed New York City facility with similar one elsewhere. Even without the New York City facility, Amazon probably will never see the kind of growth that would justify its rapid office expansion, and it could go into a decline at any point without warning. That becomes much more likely if there is an recession in the United States, a prospect that seems closer today after the government released data that shows a decline at retail in December.
The timing of Amazon’s decline is hard to predict, but a decline at some point is inevitable, and New York City will be spared the impact of that decline, now that an Amazon office complex will not be going forward there.
