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Amazon continues expansion in New York City even after HQ2 debacle

The e-retailer announces 3,500 new tech and corporate jobs in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York, Phoenix and San Diego.

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Ben Fox Rubin Former senior reporter
Ben Fox Rubin was a senior reporter for CNET News in Manhattan, reporting on Amazon, e-commerce and mobile payments. He previously worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and got his start at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
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Sean Keane Former Senior Writer
Sean knows far too much about Marvel, DC and Star Wars, and poured this knowledge into recaps and explainers on CNET. He also worked on breaking news, with a passion for tech, video game and culture.
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Ben Fox Rubin
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Amazon is expanding its offices across the US.

 Angela Lang/CNET

Amazon abandoned its plans to build a 25,000-worker campus in Queens, New York, in early 2019, but it hasn't given up on the Big Apple.

On Tuesday, the e-commerce company announced another round of hiring across six of its tech hubs in the US, with the majority -- 2,000 jobs -- coming to New York City. Earlier this year, Amazon bought the Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Amazon snagged it from WeWork for a reported $1 billion and plans to convert the space into a 630,000-square-foot office.

The new tech and corporate jobs add to Amazon's announcement in December that it would hire 1,500 more New York workers. That announcement came several months after Amazon scrapped plans for a Queens campus, nicknamed HQ2, amid heavy criticism from local activists and politicians. As of December, Amazon said it employed over 8,000 people in New York City.

Seattle-based Amazon's hiring plans in Manhattan add to a big uptick in West Coast tech giants hiring thousands of more workers in New York. In 2018, Google spent $2.4 billion to buy Chelsea Market. And this month, Facebook signed a deal to lease all the office space at the James A. Farley Building by Penn Station. These leases and purchases are creating an emerging tech center on Manhattan's West Side.

Along with the New York hiring, Amazon plans to add 600 tech and corporate jobs in Dallas, 100 jobs in Detroit, 100 jobs in Denver, 500 jobs in Phoenix and 200 jobs in San Diego. In all, the company plans to hire 3,500 more people in these tech hubs, Amazon said Tuesday, and invest $1.4 billion more for new offices in these cities. The new hires will support a variety of Amazon businesses, including its grocery, fashion cloud-computing and hardware divisions.

"Thanks to New Yorkers' hard work, we've bent the curve of coronavirus, achieving, and maintaining, one of the lowest rates of infection in the country, and this major investment by Amazon underscores that we are well on our way to building back better and stronger than ever," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a major supporter of New York's HQ2 project, said in a statement Tuesday. "We have turned New York City into a true tech hub."

While Amazon isn't building its HQ2 project in New York anymore, a 25,000-employee campus is under development in the Washington, DC, area. Amazon is also working to expand substantially in Bellevue, Washington, near its Seattle headquarters.

Amazon said it employs over 876,000 people worldwide.