By GREGORY ZELLER //
With the help of another lucrative local-government economic-incentives package, Amazon has staked its latest big claim on Long Island.
Riding the wave a $16 million tax-abatement deal – approved in 2020 by the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency for Manhattan-based developer Wildflower LTD – Amazon has signed on for another “last-mile” distribution center, this one in Woodmere, just across Rockaway Boulevard from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Leveraging the 15-year Hempstead IDA package, Wildflower – which is already constructing a Brooklyn distribution center for the e-commerce giant – is building a $76 million, three-story, 232,000-square-foot warehouse on what was an 11-acre, long-term airport parking lot straddling the border between Nassau County’s Hamlet of Woodmere and the Rosedale neighborhood in Queens.
Amazon has now officially leased the under-construction facility. When completed, the “JFK Logistics Center” will create the equivalent of 50 full-time jobs while pushing Amazon’s total Long Island warehouse space – combining occupied and planned space, with as many as nine “last-mile” centers in various stages of development – past 1.4 million square feet.
Wildflower’s Hempstead IDA tax deal, which was first approved in April 2020 and closed last October, actually predates a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal granted to Amazon in March by the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency. That Nassau IDA PILOT package – projecting a total property-tax reduction of $8 million and sales-tax exemptions up to $2.8 million on construction-related expenses – supports a $72 million, 204,000-square-foot distribution warehouse targeted for Robbins Lane in Syosset.
While lavish tax breaks are what ultimately killed Amazon’s plans to locate its ballyhooed “HQ2” facility in Long Island City, they remain a vital – and hotly debated – economic-development component across Long Island and beyond.
Much like Nassau IDA Chairman Richard Kessel did in March – Kessel noted that “the county, Town [of Oyster Bay] and [Syosset Central] School District will be collecting more in revenue than they were before” through the Syosset warehouse – Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency CEO Frederick Parola accentuated the positives this week.
Even with Wildflower’s $16 million deal, bringing Amazon to Woodmere is a major win for Hempstead and Nassau County, according to Parola – not to mention the Lawrence Union Free School District, which received a one-time, $250,000 gift from Wildflower upon the closing of the developer’s incentives deal.
“The property as a parking lot generated minimal taxes for the town and school district,” Parola said Wednesday. “Now, it will be put to better use and provide tremendous economic benefits and employment opportunities.
“Having Amazon lease this site is huge,” the CEO added. “It’s incredibly exciting.”
