Amazon's failed Queens headquarters proposal still reverberates
Part of the Long Island City site of what would have been Amazon's new headquarters, if approved three years ago, with new development in the background. Credit: Newsday/Randi F. Marshall
It’s been three years since the worst Valentine’s Day breakup New York ever experienced, when Amazon pulled its plans to build HQ2, its second headquarters, in Long Island City.
With it went 25,000 jobs, $27 billion in tax revenue, an enormous economic ripple effect that would have washed across Long Island, and the intangible energy such a project would have brought. The debacle was a failure of imagination, courage, communication, and leadership.
Since then, while parts of Long Island City have grown, the area Amazon was eyeing — an industrial wasteland called Anable Basin — remains much the same.
In the months leading up to that unfortunate day, elected leaders stuck to tired strategies, some saying "no" without thought, some just staying absurdly silent. They threw every blockade they could, caring more about reelection prospects than the proposal’s merits and potential.
Had city and state officials tried harder, done more, the area now would be full of construction equipment, new workers, and anticipation. Long Island City would be getting infrastructure improvements and community benefits. Elected officials and the tech behemoth’s top executives would be partners, perhaps jointly hosting community conversations and job fairs. And Long Island would be housing new workers, recruiting new companies, and lapping up the benefits of being in Amazon HQ2’s backyard.
It’s the same "would be" world we might wish to see at the Nassau Hub, Enterprise Park in Calverton, and so many other Long Island spots that remain stuck, empty, lifeless.
Oh, you say, the pandemic would have stopped everything in Long Island City, anyway. There’d be no HQ2, no matter what elected officials and community representatives did back then.
Think again. Look at Virginia, the other site Amazon chose for half its headquarters, but where its attention is now fully focused. There, construction began in 2020 and the first phase is scheduled for completion by 2023. Amazon already has signed on tenants for the restaurant and retail piece of its complex — not big, scary corporate names, but small, local businesses ready to open on site.
Since Amazon left, there have been other efforts to develop Anable Basin. One developer group proposed 12 million square feet worth of parks, entertainment, and housing. The plan wouldn’t have had the same regional impact — nothing really could — but it certainly could have helped.
Never mind. Elected officials in New York City stopped that, too.
Perhaps the only change coming is in the faces of two of the area’s elected representatives, Amazon’s chief opponents, City Councilman James Van Bramer and State Sen. Michael Gianaris.
Thanks to term limits, Van Bramer stepped down last year, replaced by newcomer Julie Won, who has advocated for affordable housing and improved infrastructure. Gianaris, the Senate’s deputy majority leader, has no such term limits. But in a fascinating twist, after the redistricting process he co-chaired, Gianaris, too, will no longer represent much of the area Amazon sought.
For now, Anable Basin is a symbol only of what could have been. On a visit to the area this week, I walked past old manufacturing facilities and transportation depots, decrepit infrastructure and vacant buildings, seeing how little had changed since my husband and I got married at the Water’s Edge restaurant there nearly 21 years ago. Except, perhaps, the restaurant itself, which closed in 2015 and has remained empty since.
Until new leaders are willing to do what’s hard when other worthy proposals appear, Anable Basin, like so many of those still-waiting Long Island parcels, won’t see that "would be" world become reality.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall’s opinions are her own.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of square feet worth of parks, entertainment, and housing a developer group proposed at Anable Basin.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
