Amazon Steps Up NYC HQ2 PR Campaign Days Before 2nd in Series of Hearings
“The best things Amazon will deliver to Queens won’t come in a box,” says an Amazon flyer that appeared in Queens residential mailboxes over the weekend trumpeting its new Long Island City headquarters as “a great opportunity for New York.”
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Amazon vows to be “your partner and work together so that Long Island City, our employees, our customers, and New York thrive” through billions in tax proceeds and numerous “educational opportunities,” says the flyer. The handout appeared days before the New York City Council is scheduled to hold the second in a series of oversight hearings probing the terms of the project and its likely day-to-day impact on New Yorkers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), a Queens native who spearheaded the bid to bring Amazon to Long Island City, recently called the controversial deal a “lightning rod” for “rhetoric” on both political “extremes” (see 1811190012).
Witnesses haven’t been announced for Wednesday’s hearing before the council’s Finance Committee on the theme: “Does the Amazon Deal Deliver for New York City Residents?” The council is promising to give the public the chance to testify at a future hearing and is encouraging New Yorkers to send questions to the live hearings through social media. The theme of the first hearing Dec. 12, "Exposing the Closed-Door Process,” reflected frustrations council leaders expressed that the negotiations that brought Amazon to Long Island City didn’t give them a seat at the table.
Those frustrations boiled over at the hearing when Council Speaker Corey Johnson, D-Manhattan, confronted Brian Huseman, Amazon vice president-public policy, with a quote attributed to CEO Jeff Bezos positioning Amazon as a predator stalking small book publishers as prey. The quote appeared in Brad Stone's 2013 book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.
Relaying a question that Margot Atwell, Kickstarter director-publishing, tweeted to the hearing, Johnson, who also is New York City's acting public advocate, asked Huseman: “Will Amazon change how it works with the critically important book publishing industry, which makes its primary home in New York City, to be supportive rather than approaching small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle?”
Huseman’s response was first to deny the accuracy of the Bezos quote, then say, “We work with publishers well.” Kindle Direct Publishing, he said, “allows authors to have their works seen by the world. We have great examples of authors whose books weren’t published already who had an avenue to reach readers.”
Johnson retorted: “I’m glad you’re here, but I feel most of the questions today you don’t directly answer.” It’s difficult, he said, “when we’re trying to ask real questions about Amazon’s past practices and how they’re going to be good neighbors here in New York City when we get pretty general answers that aren’t specific.”
Amazon and New York are “at the very beginning of this process,” said Huseman. “We want this to be a dialogue with you.” That didn’t placate Johnson, who said: “I feel like we were brought in towards the end of a process. The beginning of the process started when you started negotiating in private, requiring people to sign nondisclosure agreements, getting $3 billion worth of subsidies, avoiding the land-use process. It doesn’t feel like the beginning of a process to me.”