New York was ready to offer Amazon even bigger incentives package: Report

New York was reportedly ready to offer Amazon $800 million more in incentives than previously known as the state competed to house one of Amazon's headquarters starting in 2017.

State officials' first offer included $1.4 billion of tax credits contingent on the number of employees hired and more than $1 billion in various other grants, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Together, those numbers are $800 million more than the agreement New York and Amazon eventually struck.

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Empire State Development, the umbrella organization for New York's economic development public-benefit corporations, oversaw the back-and-forth that ended with Amazon pulling out of the deal on Valentine's Day.

"New York state was competing with 200 other locations and states offering over $10 billion, to secure 50,000 jobs and billions of dollars in local investment from Amazon," ESD spokesman Matthew Gorton told FOX Business. "At the time, the project was much larger in scope and our thoughtful proposals — including one that ensured a dedicated pipeline of homegrown talent — brought Amazon to the table. Throughout the negotiating process, we sharpened our incentive package and ultimately secured a better return on investment for the state and the biggest economic development opportunity in New York’s history."

ESD also proposed an arrangement in which the state would pay for 25 percent of first-year wages for some job-training program graduates to ensure workplace diversity, The Journal reported.

The e-commerce giant was supposed to build a new campus in Long Island City, a neighborhood in Queens, but faced mounting criticism for the $3 billion in incentives that it would receive as a result of the deal. In exchange, Amazon said it would create 25,000 high-paying jobs and invest tens of millions of dollars in the local area.

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Amazon selected New York after a year-long competition that left hundreds of cities around the country scrambling to pitch themselves to the Seattle-based corporation. In November 2018, Amazon said it would split its headquarters between Arlington, Virginia, and New York.

The decision was made, however, after closed-door meetings between Amazon officials and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

However, Amazon said in December that it will bring a much smaller workforce to Manhattan by leasing office space without special tax credits.

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FOX Business' Megan Henney contributed to this report.