Company Bloomberg
Date Announced 5/8/2000
Site 59th Street and Lexington Avenue
Total Subsidy $14 million

Amount tied to job creation

$8.4 million
Promised Job Creation 2,300
Promised Job Retention 1,700
Length of Contract 20 years
Competing Sites none
Conditions 60% of the incentives are contingent on increasing workforce to 4,000 over next 20 years.
Notes Shortly after winning the mayoral election in November 2001, Michael Bloomberg, founder and head of Bloomberg, L.P., sent a letter to the IDA turning down this subsidy package. The move was regarded as an acknowledgement that taking the money could create conflict-of-interest problems for his new administration. Mr. Bloomberg had in the past been critical of subsidy deals, despite negotiating one for his company. In turning down the package, he told The New York Times: "Any company that makes a decision as to where they are going to be based on the tax rate is a company that won't be around very long... If you're down to that incremental margin, you don't have a business." (NYT 11/8/01)


 

 

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The Giuliani administration granted the financial news firm Bloomberg $14 million in incentives to facilitate its move into a new headquarters on the site of the former Alexander's department store at 59th & Lexington. As of September 2000, the planned building is a 75-story, 1.3 million square-foot skyscraper slated to include expensive retail stores, a five-star hotel and 200 "superluxury" condominiums with a projected price of  $6 million for a 3,000 square-foot apartment.

Corporate Notes
Critics
A note on sources -- or why many of these profiles appear incomplete. They are. Good Jobs New York compiled the numbers in these profiles from press releases and news accounts of the deals. Unfortunately, more detailed information on these subsidies is very difficult to obtain -- even though it should be readily available to the public. In many cases, neither the company nor the city nor state released certain information, particularly the terms of the agreement, i.e., the conditions which the company had to meet in order to receive the subsidy. It should also be noted that the value of the subsidy may not end up being equal to the value estimated at the time of the agreement. And it should not be assumed that the actual number of jobs retained and created will be the same as the numbers predicted.

Because the public deserves easy access to information about how taxpayer dollars are being spent, Good Jobs New York will update these profiles as we uncover more information.

Good Jobs New York  - May 25, 2001