Empire State Building
Turn out the lights: The Empire State Building in New York City previously glowed Amazon orange to support a bid for HQ2. (Flickr Photo)

Commentary: More than a year ago, when Amazon announced its intention to create a second headquarters somewhere in North America — equal in size and function and headcount to what it has in its Seattle hometown — I warned the salivating would-be suitors to be careful what they wished for.

That warning was focused on what a city such as Denver or Austin or Raleigh or Nashville or 234 others — should one prevail in Jeff Bezos’s hunger games — could expect by way of changes in everything from housing affordability to traffic congestion to disruption of civic identity.

Much to no one’s surprise, my September 2017 advice went unheeded. In the ensuing months, bids to be the home of HQ2 rolled in and an embarrassing spectacle played out from coast to coast, as politicians and business leaders promised everything from huge tax breaks to name changes for municipalities. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo even joked that he would change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” if that’s what it took to land the tech giant and its promise of 50,000 jobs.

RELATED: Politicians pushing back on corporate power celebrate victory in Amazon’s NYC reversal

Cuomo’s state ultimately succeeded in getting half of what it set out to land when Amazon announced in November that New York City and Northern Virginia would both be getting headquarters large remote offices in the much-ballyhooed HQ2 sweepstakes.

Fast forward all of three months and Amazon is no longer going to set up shop in the Long Island City section of Queens. The company shocked the Big Apple and pretty much everyone else east of Lake Washington by saying it didn’t like the way some state and local politicians were pushing back against its deal to do business in New York. Thanks for the promise of $3 billion in government incentives, but … buh bye.

A day after huffing that Amazon wasn’t “tough” enough for New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio still seemed confused about how to react to what just happened. He called what transpired on Thursday “astounding” and “disappointing” and said it was “disrespectful” to the people of New York.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” de Blasio said in an an interview Friday morning. “Why did they even bother to choose New York City if they didn’t even want to be a part of New York City and do the work it takes to be a good neighbor?”

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