My own $0.02 on the whole thing:
- I thought that the city offered too much in incentives to Amazon, and that there was a little too much uncertainty - i.e. 25K jobs over 10 years - does that mean approx 2500 new jobs per year? or 1000 jobs in year one and 24000 in year 9? (I know that' an extreme example, but the ramp up has tax, and generated revenue implications).
- This is a ploy to stoke the flames of Cuomo's presidential aspirations. He's already facing a state that has some of the highest taxes in the country, and stagnating population growth. He just admitted this week that people are leaving NY for FL to save on taxes (he blamed Trump's Property tax deduction cap, of course). If he gets Amazon to move, job growth, that's one feather in his cap. Of course, in 3 years, infrastructure will be taxed, so he'll drum up an opportunity to tax NYers for the upgrades.
- In case you didn't know - most of the major tech companies already have offices in NY - Google has a few thousand employees, Facebook has offices here - and guess what so does Amazon - Amazon Video has offices and development teams in NYC. (Audible has offices in Newark) - Even if they did get incentives to move in, they weren't big enough to warrant news articles.
I have a feeling Amazon will still grow in NYC/NY Metro, just not at the rate that they previously wanted.