The pushback, combined with the persistence of employees working remotely, has hampered cities that relied on tech workers to frequent coffee shops, dog daycare and public transportation.
Last month Mr. Jassy wrote in a letter to employees that most corporate staff were expected to return to the office three days a week beginning May 1. Many Amazon workers complained, but Seattle and Bellevue city officials encouraged him.
“Events really changed,” said Richard Florida, a University of Toronto professor who has studied urban development and technology for more than two decades. “We had a pandemic, remote work became a thing. But I think this is another cautionary tale, perhaps the last cautionary tale, not to bet an entire community on one company.”
The slowdown in Amazon’s HQ2 is perhaps the most indicative of how quickly the tides of its ambitions have turned from just a few years ago. Amazon kicked off an international frenzy in 2017 when it announced its search for a second headquarters, saying it wanted to find a place where it could expand to house 50,000 employees. Hundreds of cities and towns across North America jumped on Amazon, hoping to attract what were seen as high-paying jobs of the future.
But long-term hopes were dashed in late 2018, when Amazon announced it would split the second headquarters evenly between Queens and Arlington, Virginia, two metropolitan areas where Amazon already had more employees than anywhere outside of Seattle and the United States. Bay Area. .
At the time, the company said the developments would require $5 billion in construction and other investment. Amazon was offered more than $2 billion in tax breaks from New York and Virginia.
Tax breaks and gentrification concerns sparked fierce political, union, and community pushback over the Long Island City campus, and in early 2019, Amazon canceled its plans for the Queens campus.
