Members of the Arlington County Board, concerned that protests over Amazon’s plans for New York would spill over into Northern Virginia, worked with company officials to defuse local objections.
In a series of emails obtained by Tax Notes April 10, Arlington County Board Vice Chair Libby Garvey (D) urged Amazon.com Inc. officials not to announce a change of plans in New York in a way that would affect Arlington County before the county’s deal was finalized.
In a February 8 email to Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy for Amazon, Garvey wrote, “Should you decide to change course with NY in a way that would affect us, it’s important that nothing get announced before we’ve completed the agreements we’re finishing up.”
“There are still some vocal opponents here, but I think more and more people are becoming comfortable with the current plans. As I’m sure you appreciate, it would be difficult and painful to change anything now. Once everything is set, of course, we can talk about planning for more folks if that’s something you decide you want,” Garvey added.
The email was sent just days before the company's February 14 announcement that it was canceling its planned headquarters in the New York City borough of Queens over political opposition to the project and that it did not intend to search for another HQ2 location. "We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada," the company said in the announcement.
The local subsidies approved in the county's performance agreement with Amazon include a grant worth $23 million that will come from a percentage of new incremental revenue generated by a tax on hotel rooms and other lodgings, and an additional $28 million generated by tax increment financing revenue that will be used to make infrastructure investments in and around the project site.
Virginia has authorized up to $750 million in additional incentives for Amazon’s planned headquarters in the state.
The project has faced resistance from community organizers concerned about the incentives and the impact on affordable housing, though opposition to the company’s planned headquarters in New York City was much more intense. That project drew fire from city council members who expressed frustration with the deal and questioned the approximately $3 billion in state and local tax incentives offered to the company.
The emails between Arlington County Board members and Amazon representatives show that the company was concerned about the pushback in Arlington. In a March 5 email, Garvey encouraged Huseman and Andrea Fava, public policy director for Amazon, to attend the board’s March 16 meeting despite their hesitancy to do so.
“There likely will be a little kerfuffle, but not much,” Garvey wrote. “We’d have you after public comment (and assume/suggest you not be there for public comment) and we would make sure the conversation will just be the Board with our staff and you. Anyone disrupting the meeting would be escorted out. It will be ok.”
Garvey told Tax Notes April 19 that the board has not spoken with the company about adding jobs to the Virginia headquarters in light of the decision to pull out of New York, but said it is possible that county staff or the state has had discussions with the company. However, she said that even if Amazon were to seek further incentives for creating more jobs in Arlington County, “I can’t see any way we would give them additional incentives.”
Arlington County spokeswoman Cara O'Donnell said there are no plans for the company to add more jobs. “We're focusing on the deal we already have in place, as is Amazon,” she said.
Garvey said the county and state had always assumed that Amazon could create more jobs than the 25,000 that it has promised. Amazon initially sought a single location that could accommodate 50,000 jobs, but announced in November 2018 that it would split the project between locations in Northern Virginia and New York City.
“We were just worried that with New York suddenly being off the table, that if they . . . decided to come here and change everything in midcourse that that wouldn’t be good, and we weren’t really ready to make that change,” Garvey explained.
Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth said the company’s plans in Virginia have not changed, but she had no specific comment on the emails.
Arlington County and Virginia economic development officials could not be reached for comment by press time.