For Amazon HQ2 deal, Atlantic Yards serves as a warning
Official projections deserve skepticism, scrutiny
The plan for a new Amazon complex in Long Island City, Queens, arrived this week with huge fanfare — at least 25,000 jobs! (over ten years). But we must remember that, despite gauzy estimates about public benefits, nothing is certain. So promises of jobs and tax revenue deserve deep scrutiny and continued oversight.
Those are lessons from the Atlantic Yards plan that gave us Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which — though less an office development than arena-plus-housing one — went through the same process touted for Amazon by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
That process is overseen by Empire State Development, or ESD, a state authority answerable to the governor. If Atlantic Yards is a guide, ESD will be quite accommodating to Amazon, willing to revise agreements and evade transparency.