Amazon said it plans to house more than 2,000 employees at the historic Lord & Taylor building in Manhattan under a nationwide expansion of its corporate offices.
The Seattle-based e-tailing giant said Tuesday that it will hire workers to fill the landmark tower on Fifth Avenue in the coming years as it grows its Big Apple “tech hub” – a plan that looks like a fat bet on offices , even though the pandemic forces most of its employees to work from home.
Still, Amazon said it will not begin moving to the new 630,000-square-foot Midtown office until 2023.
The new employees will join Amazon’s 800 other companies and tech workers in New York City in support of their advertising, devices, music, video streaming, fashion and other businesses. The colossus for e-commerce is also expanding its corporate offices in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Phoenix and San Diego with plans to add about 1,500 jobs in those cities, according to a press release.
“As we expand our tech hubs and continue to invest in communities across the country, we are excited to create new jobs and invest in New York with a new office in Manhattan that will enable the organic growth of our business teams. fit in the city, ”said Ardine Williams, Amazon’s vice president of labor development, in a statement.
Amazon had plans to bring thousands of employees to the 11-story building at 424 Fifth Ave. when it bought it for about $ 1.1 billion, The Post reported in March. WeWork had sought to renovate the long-running home of the bankrupt Lord & Taylor’s flagship store into its own corporate office, but scrapped the plans amid a series of scandals that undermined the public offering.
Amazon and other tech giants have hired employees from home to work under lockdowns aimed at controlling the coronavirus pandemic, which has also driven a growing demand for online shopping that has exploded Amazon’s profits .
The company has said that employees can work remotely until Jan. 8, but Williams told the Wall Street Journal that most of its employees will eventually return to work in person. Amazon did not answer The Post’s email questions about what will happen after January.
Amazon unveiled its latest New York expansion about a year and a half after it abandoned plans for a sprawling Queens campus that would have created 25,000 jobs in exchange for about $ 3 billion in tax offers and subsidies. The company ran away after local officials and activists criticized the incentive package.
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