Amazon to Open Office in New York

Less than a year after cancelling plans to open its second headquarters in New York City, Amazon has announced they will be leasing office space in New York after all.

CNBC reports that Amazon will be opening office space in New York, despite cancelling plans for its HQ2 in Long Island City. Amazon will be leasing 335,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan. It will be in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood.

The new office space will bring an estimated 1,500 jobs to the city. The plans for HQ2 was expected to bring 25,000 jobs, according to CNBC. However, in exchange for bringing the jobs, Amazon was promised $3 billion in performance-based incentives. These incentives would have been tax-payer funded and were heavily criticized.

Critics of the HQ2 plan see Amazon coming to Manhattan as a success though, according to CNBC. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted "Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways...". Rep. Ocasio-Cortez represents the region where Amazon was intending to build HQ2.

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