Amazon’s ditching of its Queens plan has left local business owners in the lurch and real estate brokers bracing for Long Island City’s boom to go bust.
“After the news hit, we had interest all over the place,” Louis Adler, a broker with REAL New York, said, recalling Amazon’s November announcement that it would build its 8 million-square-foot HQ2 campus in the area.
“Now a lot of people aren’t feeling as bullish about the numbers they can get going forward.”
Corcoran broker Lauren Renee Bennett said she was bracing for buyers looking to renegotiate home prices with Amazon now pulling out.
“That’s not a conversation I’ve had yet, but I’m sure it’s one that’ll come up,” she said.
Merchants got dollar signs in their eyes over the prospect of the retail giant bringing 25,000 jobs to the area, but now they say their hopes are dashed.
“It’s definitely heartbreaking,” said Steve Logiudice, 35, owner of the Centro Pizza Bar & Italian Kitchen on Vernon Boulevard, about two blocks from where Amazon planned to move in.
“There’ll be less foot traffic, and we depend on foot traffic. We depend on, obviously, the locals, but we depend on the construction workers, the business workers, so we depend on all that.”
Other proprietors blamed the Amazon plan’s opponents — Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer and state Sen. Michael Gianaris — for putting the kibosh on the deal without considering local businesses’ interests.
“It’s a nightmare for us. They didn’t think about the community. They didn’t think about the people who voted them in,” said Giana Cerbone, a Long Island City native who owns Italian eatery Manducatis Rustica.
Donna Drimer, owner of the Matted art gallery and gift shop, called Amazon’s Thursday announcement “the most bizarre turn of events I have ever experienced in my years of
business.”
Additional reporting by Max Jaeger