In February, Amazon abandoned its plans to build a huge corporate campus in Long Island City, Queens and locate 25,000 jobs there.

Amazon pulled the plug after a backlash from progressive politicians and labor unions over the state and city tax subsidies used to lure the tech giant.

Some warned the project's demise would hurt the city's status as a major tech hub. But now, Amazon has decided to lease new office space on Manhattan's West Side and put 1,500 new jobs there.

The announcement has triggered a chorus of “I told you so” from critics who say it shows the company didn't need the tax breaks in the first place.

“There's no way they can continue to dominate marketplaces all over the world without having a major presence in New York City,” said Democratic Queens City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer. “That's what they always wanted. That's why … you never needed to throw them $3 billion in taxpayer revenue to get them to come here when they're desperate to be here.”

Indeed, one of the projects biggest critics, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, tweeted out a photo of herself, saying, "Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions."
 

Amazon now employs 8,000 people in the city, 3,500 of them in white collar jobs, apart from its order fulfillment centers here.

Governor Cuomo, whose administration crafted the Amazon deal, says the 335,000 square feet of additional space Amazon will now lease pales next to the 4 million square feet it was supposed to occupy in Queens.

“This is crumbs from the table compared to a feast,” Cuomo said.

And others point out that the new jobs will be in Manhattan, where there are already plenty of tech offices, and not in Queens, a borough that, the project's backers said, would have benefited from Amazon's huge expansion.

“Fifteen-hundred jobs on the West Side of Manhattan does not equal 25,000 jobs in Long Island City, and we really need to be thinking about how we ensure those jobs are in the five boroughs, that they are across the city,” said Julie Samuels, the executive director of Tech: NYC.

Amazon says the new Manhattan offices will open in the third quarter of 2021.