A misunderstanding of "basic facts" was the key culprit in the failed plan to bring an Amazon campus to Queens, the man who captained the city's negotiations with the e-commerce giant says.

James Patchett, president of the New York City Economic Development Corp., chiefly blamed mass confusion about the $3 billion incentive package Albany and City Hall had offered the company for the outrage and outcry that drove the tech behemoth from the city. Addressing a Crain's breakfast forum on Thursday, Patchett asserted that both Amazon and the media failed to inform residents that the vast majority of the proffered assistance consisted of tax breaks and credits tied to job creation in a now-fallow industrial site in Long Island City.

Even today, many of the deals opponents, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called for the state and city to instead invest the $3 billion in education, transit and other public amenities—apparently still not understanding that all but $500,000,000 of the package simply would have come off the company's tax bill.

"Anyone familiar with the facts knows there is no $3 billion. There never was," Patchett said. "The dialogue was poisoned and so filled with misinformation. To me, that was the central thing that prevented a really honest conversation about it."

Patchett argued that a confluence of factors allowed the false narrative to gain currency in the political and activist class, even as a majority of residents supported the deal. Among these factors were Ocasio-Cortez's shocking defeat of former Rep. Joseph Crowley last year, the anti-Amazon organizing of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union, the appointment of anti-Amazon state Sen. Michael Gianaris to the veto-wielding Public Authorities Control Board and complacency on the part of the project's supporters. But Patchett criticized Amazon for failing to organize and galvanize its local backers and counter false claims about the subsidy package and for poorly acquitting itself before the City Council.

"There's no question that the company was not prepared for what happened in New York City," he said. "They didn't perform particularly well at their public hearings. They never hired a single New Yorker to work for them, to talk to New Yorkers and never really connected with people in the city."

Amazon did, in fact, hire several New York lobbyists to promote the plan.

Despite the missed opportunity, Patchett remained confident that western Queens, as well as Downtown Brooklyn, the South Bronx and Staten Island's North Shore, is "destined" to become a "booming business hub." The city's ability to offer tax incentives remains necessary to encourage the development in those areas, he said.