Fingers crossed: Welcome, Amazonians. The everything store and tech giant is poised, something more than rumor has it, to set up shop in Long Island City. This isn't the second headquarters initially envisioned; the $1 trillion-valued Seattle behemoth is now looking to split its new digs between New York and suburban D.C.
We'll take it, celebrating the fact that the scrappy little hub once known as Silicon Alley has matured to the point that it genuinely rivals California's original counterpart. The addition of a hefty Amazon presence right across the East River from Cornell's new innovation campus, and a stone's throw from ambitious plans to remake the giant Sunnyside Yards, would complement a startup ecosystem and big outposts of other major firms.
Actually, we should say we'll take it with a couple of asterisks.
One: Incentives offered by the city and state must be sane. It would have been irresponsible for City Hall and Albany to sit on their hands and refuse to negotiate, forfeiting the chance to land a major employer and market-shaper, but Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo must ensure that taxpayers don't give away the store to lure the store.
Two: Long Island City's infrastructure _ especially its transit capacity _ needs an upgrade if in a few years it's going to be home to several thousand more workers. Which means the MTA, already proceeding at a slug's pace on moving to next-generation signal technology, has to pick it up.
Three: De Blasio, who declared fellow retail giant Walmart unwelcome in New York CIty, should finally be forced to admit that a massive corporate headquarters, and the jobs and tax revenue it delivers, is worth it. That's true even though Amazon is the source of many a mom-and-pop's woes, not to mention the target of many a union's high-volume howls.
Posturing doesn't pay the bills. The business of America _ including, last we checked, New York City _ is still business.
