Amazon is looking for at least 500,000 square feet of commercial space by 2019 and up to 8 million square feet over the next decade. The World Trade Center provides roughly 6.8 million available square feet. | Getty World Trade Center looking to court Amazon's next headquarters

One of New York City's most famous stretches of real estate is looking to house one of the world's fastest-growing companies.

The World Trade Center is among the sites vying for Amazon's next headquarters and has submitted a plan to the city to spread the e-commerce giant's new headquarters across multiple buildings throughout its Lower Manhattan campus, according to four sources with knowledge of the bid.


The application is among more than two dozen the city's Economic Development Corporation is poring over before submitting its proposal to Amazon next month. It is also among dozens throughout the country looking to woo the online retail giant and its promise of 50,000 jobs.

The company's recent announcement that it wants cities across the country to compete for its presence has set off a national frenzy among political and business leaders to court the new headquarters and the consequent economic boom promised to whichever city emerges as the victor.

Although several sources close to the process raised doubts New York City would win the national contest, all agreed there is no downside to competing, and the World Trade Center's backers — some of the city's most powerful real estate interests — say it has plenty to offer.

Developer Silverstein Properties submitted its plan in partnership with the Alliance for Downtown New York, an organization that promotes Lower Manhattan, and the Durst Organization, which owns part of the site.

Aside from the notoriety of the World Trade Center itself, the site is a transportation nexus connecting Manhattan, Brooklyn, nearby Jersey City and Newark in New Jersey — all home to an increasing influx of the millennials Amazon has said it wants to attract.

The city announced this week it received "more than two dozen proposals [that] total over 50 million square feet of commercial space across 23 different neighborhoods in all five boroughs." Of those sites, World Trade Center remains in contention, several sources said.

Amazon is looking for at least 500,000 square feet of commercial space by 2019 and up to 8 million square feet over the next decade. The World Trade Center provides roughly 6.8 million available square feet: 2.8 million at 2 World Trade Center, 1.5 million at the site of the former Deustche Bank (which is not built yet), 700,000 to 800,000 at 1 World Trade Center and 1.8 million at 3 World Trade Center, which is estimated to be complete by next spring.

The bid is also an opportunity for Silverstein to fill 2 World Trade Center, the Bjarke Ingels-designed tower that has yet to open and has struggled to lure tenants.

Compared to other political leaders who are prepared to give Amazon billions of dollars in tax incentives, Mayor Bill de Blasio's courtship, at least publicly, has been conspicuously aloof.

In an interview on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show" Thursday morning, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen, said the city could put forward a few options for the company to peruse.

"I suspect we'll make it to the next round because we're New York," she said.

But she reiterated the mayor's position that New York would not offer significant subsidies to lure the multi-billion-dollar company, which is viewed, rightly or not, as a death knell to local retail.

Competing to house the company could put de Blasio in an uncomfortable position with his liberal base that values local commerce and laments the routine shuttering of any neighborhood store.

“Is there a disconnect for a progressive administration like Mayor de Blasio’s, to bid for jobs from Amazon when the company is getting some of the blame for putting a lot of the mom-and-pop stores out of business in the city?” Lehrer asked.

Glen defended the city's choice to vie for the company.

“I don't think there’s an exact causation between Amazon’s growing e-commerce business and the challenges that are facing many retailers,” Glen replied. "When people actually look at what’s going on in the street, there is a disconnect between the perception of the number of small businesses that are going out of business and the actual number."

She added that in places like Brooklyn and Queens, small boutique stores continue to thrive.

"There’s always going to be that young woman who's graduating from Parsons who's going to open a small store somewhere in Brooklyn and have her customers come in and touch and feel the perfect black dress," she said.

Callers into the show pummeled her with questions about the city's bid. One man, whose former bike shop in Manhattan had gone out of business, questioned the value of inviting Amazon to the city.

“What quality of job are we talking about here?” the man asked. “Being an assistant to a robot?”

“The jobs the headquarters would bring are not the jobs that would be, quote, ‘an assistant to a robot,’” Glen said, adding that New York may as well get on the Amazon bandwagon. “The proliferation of e-commerce is going to happen whether or not Amazon is located in New York City. That is the truth."

Meanwhile several proponents of the city's bid privately grumbled that the mayor's circumspection — highlighted by a comment this week that he has never shopped on Amazon — is unhelpful.

Within City Hall, several officials were concerned about working with the company after union leaders raised concerns about its business practices when it announced the opening of a warehouse on Staten Island recently. But Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said he would support the bid for the next headquarters of the Seattle-based company.

Like de Blasio, though, he said excessive subsidies should not be part of the package.

"Amazon needs the city more than the city needs Amazon – plain and simple," Appelbaum said in a statement. "If Amazon wants to come here they can afford to do so on their own. RWDSU is fundamentally opposed to using tax payer subsidies for multi-trillion dollar businesses to set up shop in our city, especially when it’s something they want to do and can do on their own anyway."

Another location the city is considering is Governors Island, which the de Blasio administration has been hoping to transform into a mixed-use site for years. The mayor announced aspirations to redevelop it in his State of the City address in 2016, but so far nothing has materialized.

De Blasio indicated in a recent interview that he thinks Amazon would find value in any part of the city.

"We're going to pursue Amazon for sure. I'm going to be meeting with Amazon executives," de Blasio said in an interview on NY1. "We're showing them Queens, we're going to show them Brooklyn, we're going to show them a lot of different sites that work. ... This is one of the great global cities. We're going to make the argument this is a value proposition."

UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect additional comment.