So what is the way forward? Is there a progressive case to be made for Amazon that would appease the critics whose support seems essential? If Amazon does back away, it will be because the investments it has already made in training, hiring and development could go wasted in the face of an uncertain public approval process.

That process became a lot more uncertain when Michael Gianaris, a state senator representing the district where Amazon would land, was nominated to a board that has the capacity to disable the deal. He has aggressively argued against the arrival of Amazon under the terms the city and state granted.

If Amazon demands to be loved less ambivalently, logic dictates that it will have to concede to a renegotiation of some of those terms. Crucially, if it wants to salvage a public image that extends beyond the notion that it is merely on the receiving end of things, it will need to broaden its conception of talent.

At a panel I moderated at a New York Times conference on urbanism in December, Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City and someone who has been involved in the Amazon deal, explained the company’s thinking about coming to New York. Executives looked across the river and saw the new Cornell technology campus on Roosevelt Island, what could be a quick ferry trip away, and decided that Long Island City was where they had to be.

But talent comes in many forms. Also close to the future Amazon site is LaGuardia Community College, which serves more than 50,000 mostly low-income students, many from immigrant families and most working two or three jobs as they slowly make their way through school.

Gail Mellow, a community college graduate herself, is LaGuardia’s president. When she joined a committee on job development that the city and state had assembled after the Amazon deal was announced, she said, she was surrounded by leaders of community groups that served the same constituency that she did. They all agreed that Amazon offered extraordinary opportunities because of the sheer number and scope of the jobs it brought. Huge investments of money, beyond what has been promised, would have to be made not just to employ low-income workers but also to pay for training that would put them on the path to meaningful social mobility.

“What needs to happen has to happen at every level — in our local middle schools, high schools, at community colleges, all through CUNY,’’ Ms. Mellow said, referring to the city’s public university system and the corporate partnerships that would have to evolve. Amazon would need to make commitments to poverty reduction part of its mission. When it had the option in Seattle, it refused.

Still, Ms. Mellow said she was “hyperbolically optimistic.”

“Could this happen? I really don’t know. But I have never seen a chance like this before.” And maybe Amazon hasn’t either.

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