County Executive Bellone Makes A Pitch For Amazon To Build In Suffolk County

County Executive Steve Bellone, Long Island Association Kevin Law, Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter Amazon has announced a plan to invest $5 billion to build and staff a second headquarters (HQ2). The facility is expected to employ 50,000 workers. The competition is intense. In a press conference this week Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone made his public pitch to Amazon to build the facility here in Suffolk County. Bellone’s proposal supports building HQ2 on the site of the former Pilgrim State Hospital in the town of Islip.

“This is very exciting this is an exciting opportunity. Amazon East Coast and our message to Amazon is that Long Island and particularly Suffolk County is the place that you want to be. We have everything here; we have first of all a history of innovation on Long Island and innovation to assets here that are global in scale and scope and are incredible. From Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbory Laboratory, another institution right on the boarder.

And of course we have world class natural resources here, world class beaches and golf courses, and fishing, and everything you can imagine, boating, for an incredible quality of life. And we know how important that is in today’s global economy for your employees to provide a kind of lifestyle and in life that is attractive, particularly to those young millenials and high-skill high-knowledge workers that you need in an innovation company like Amazon.

We have that here. We have the educated workforce you know, we have the vibrancy, we have you know proximity to the most vibrant city in the world, and we have a great spot and that is in the great Town of Islip, I’m here with my colleague and friend, Supervisor Angie Carpenter, and that site is the old Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, which is now known as the Heartland Town Square development. And that is a perfect place because it not only meets all of the requirements, and the Supervisor can talk more about that — but 15 million square feet of space, 452 acres, it’s got all the elements that that young people are looking for.

The vibrancy the cultural arts that you know the shops and the restaurants and the housing all together all one right off of the LIE right close to the Deer Park train station right on the Main Line of the Long Island Railroad. And, of course,  the supervisors going to talk about proximity to our region’s airport.

This is a great sight. Long Island is place of innovation. We have a history of innovation we have a highly educated workforce. We have all of the amazing lifestyle requirements that anyone would want to see and we have a wonderful location.”