New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris on Friday defended his opposition to Amazon‘s now-scuttled plan for what would have been a new headquarters in the Queens section of New York City.
“Amazon needs to get ahold of what they mean to communities, and act responsibility,” Gianaris said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “When they come in and take over a community like that, the community dies.”
The New York Post, known for its edgy cover headlines, called Gianaris “the man who killed the Amazon deal.”
Gianaris, whose district includes the Long Island City neighborhood in Queens where Amazon had agreed to build, claims Seattle businesses have not really benefited from having the e-commerce giant based there.
“In Seattle, the local restaurants are dying,” he argued. “It’s all insular to the campus. They go home at 5 o’clock. No one is having dinner in those restaurants.”
“If you’re going to come to a community, and you’re going to turn Long Island City into what’s happened in those towns in Seattle that I mentioned, you got to come correct and say, ‘I want to help this community thrive,'” he added.
Facing a chorus of protests from Gianaris and other New York politicians, Amazon on Thursday decided against building part of its so-called HQ2 in the Long Island City neighborhood. The company will continue to build its planned headquarters in Virginia and its other planned location in Nashville, Tennessee.
Gianaris opposed the $3 billion in incentives offered by the city to seal the deal. “When Amazon who doesn’t need the money is squeezing the government for billions of dollars just to show up, we’ve got a problem.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the area near Amazon’s formerly planned headquarters, took the company’s move as a positive sign, saying “dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed.”
