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So I had to look this up, because that Tesla factory does employee thousands of people, and it manufactures their superchargers, has an AI datacenter in it, and a bunch of desk jobs, so I wasn't sure what was failed about it.
Originally, it was supposed to be a solar panel manufacturing facility, but that didn't really pan out. There was a quota to employ a certain amount of high tech manufacturing jobs, which was later changed to just manufacturing jobs, and then just jobs.
So while the factory is there and functional, it's definitely not what was intended when it was built with certain requirements set on Tesla (or whoever would have won the contract), and what it does now, doesn't bring in anywhere near the expected economic boost that the original intended plan would have.
So in that sense I'd say it's definitely a failed project yes. But the factory is there and functional.
Edit: Also looks like their lease is coming up in a few years, and theres opposition to signing a new deal with Tesla.
One might say NYC gave Elon Musk, a white supremacist, a billion dollars to own a factory instead of employing those people in public transit and energy production for the city.
Tesla doesn't own the factory, NY owns the factory.
How much rent does tesla pay for it?
Nothing, that was the subsidy and requirement for meeting the now heavily reduced quotas.
Their lease is coming up though, and there's opposition to re-signing it, or at least changing what they pay for rent.
Fucking nothing? That's absurd.
That's usually how subsidies work in all industries.
You don't pay something, or pay a highly reduced rate, in exchange for doing something.
Come to XYZ town and you won't pay property taxes for 20 years if you build something, or you won't pay corporate state taxes, or you won't pay something else.
It becomes a bidding war between states/cities trying to offer the best deal to get the business, because the business will dwarf what they offered you.
The problem in this case is, they built this and offered it expecting an external supply chain to be built that would support the factory in NY, but because the high tech manufacturing jobs never happened, that supply chain never got built, and that supply chain was part of the whole business model and expected economic gain.
Really there would be no conceivable way other than corruption to have a similar lease when they re-sign (if they re-sign) it given that failure. Had the plan worked, that free lease would have been worth it, and Cuomo would be able to declare it a massive win.
According to Wikipedia, 1,500 people work there. We could have just given each of those people 100,000 a year for six years, and had a few thousand dollars left over. We could have given 3,000 homeless people $25,000 a year for six years, and made them productive members of society.
Instead, we made a rich Nazi richer.
I think it's closer to 1800 now, but part of the agreement is they have to employ more statewide as well, of which there are around 3,000. I might have mixed up the thousands with the statewide requirement, not factory requirement.
The deal for this factory was made before Tesla was involved. It was with another solar company which then was bought by Solar City which was then bought by Tesla. They up'd the investment when Tesla got involved.
This agreement has had these people employed, paying taxes, for 8-9 years now. That's more than the 3000 homeless people would have had for 6 years, and by the end of the lease, will be more than your 100k/y for 1500 people. And that money building the factory, went into skilled professionals salaries as well, most of who probably lived in NY.
And NY owns the factory and land, which is still worth hundreds of millions, and with or without Tesla will still have economic activity.
Was the deal a great deal for NY? In the end, it doesn't sound like it (hence failure), but they still have a factory and if they really wanted, they could kick Tesla out and bring someone else in to better align with the original intention of high tech jobs.
Its not like the money just vanished and is gone forever. Although NY did take a loss on purchasing some manufacturing equipment, that it then sold at a loss, so that part however much it is, is indeed gone, and its part of why its being called a failure.
Wouldn't a roughly equal number of jobs be created by spending it on transit?
You spend that amount of money on anything that would generate jobs and it will generate jobs.