New York Is Already a Tech Town
There are tons of people in the city doing the kinds of thing that Amazon does, which is probably why the company has set its sights on it.
The spire of the Empire State Building was lit in orange to support a bid for Amazon's second headquarters in New York.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
Just about everybody, myself included, expected Amazon.com Inc. to pick somewhere in the Washington area as the site of its much-ballyhooed second headquarters. Less expected has been the news that the company is contemplating not just one “HQ2” but two, and that while one is indeed expected to be located across the Potomac River from our nation’s capital, the other will reportedly be across the East River from Manhattan.
For Long Island City, the neighborhood in Queens where Amazon may put down roots, this status as a prospective technology hotbed is something new and different. For New York City, though, it really isn’t. New York already has lots of people working in tech, mainly in Manhattan, and growth in tech has been a major economic driver in recent years as employment in the financial sector has sputtered.