Queensbridge Grapples With Amazon HQ2 Fallout

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — Dozens of Queensbridge residents lined up for a job recruiting event Thursday, two weeks after Amazon canceled plans for a Long Island City campus and just a few blocks north of the waterfront site the retail giant would've called home.

"This is what we have to do," said community activist and Queensbridge resident Billy Robinson, 55, as he watched several dozen residents approach the Center of Hope International with resumes in hand. "All the people protesting, where are they now?"

Queensbridge, the nation's largest public housing complex with 6,600 residents, recently found itself at the center of clashes between the Amazon deal's supporters and the opposition, thanks to its sheer size and its close proximity to Amazon's proposed HQ2.

Both sides tried to claim Queensbridge for their own, insisting that they knew what Queensbridge residents wanted and that they had residents' best interests in mind, locals said.

"I still wake up and think it's a loss for everyone," Tirrell Davis, 51, said. "It feels like a little emptiness now, and no one wants to talk about it."

The Amazon HQ2 deal, announced in November 2018, was perhaps the biggest economic development initiative in city and state history.

The sprawling corporate campus was expected to create 25,000 jobs in exchange for $3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives.

The deal included $15 million for technology training and recruitment programs targeting underrepresented groups. It also promised semi-annual events like job fairs or resume workshops at Queensbridge for at least three years, beginning in 2020.

But the company backed out suddenly on Valentine's Day, citing negative feedback from state and local officials. Now, in a post-Amazon Queens, Queensbridge is left looking for alternatives, feeling like a rug was pulled out from under them.

"We have a population of thousands of people who've been forgotten," said Carl Alston, 59, a lifelong Queensbridge resident. "They chased away a lot of potential."

Alston was one of more than 100 people who stopped by the recruiting event, which Robinson and the nonprofit Urban Upbound helped organize, to help fill that emptiness residents describe.

Aramark, a food and retail service provider, was looking to hire 300-500 workers on the spot for Citi Field in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, at pay rates of $15.25 to $16.70 an hour, and hired a couple dozen workers from the nearby Astoria Houses, according to Urban Upbound workers.

The jobs are part-time and temporary, Urban Upbound staffers acknowledged, but offer a shot at full-time, permanent positions. The openings numbered in the hundreds — not anywhere close to the tens of thousands Amazon promised — but it's a start, they said.

"I go down Vernon Boulevard and I see new restaurants and stuff," said Davis, who's lived in Queensbridge for 40 years. "But nothing huge."

Still, the Amazon deal wasn't perfect, residents said. Shameek Townsend, 33, opposed the tax breaks. Some feared the traffic congestion it would bring and that public transit, particularly the 7 train, would feel a squeeze. Others argued no Queensbridge resident would have qualified for any of the 25,000 expected jobs.

But most agreed on one point: that the dealmaking process should have involved more communication.

"I don't think anybody listened to each other," Suga Ray, 34, said. "They just argued."