Put That Long-Awaited Queens Plaza Renaissance On Hold

The Times makes it sound official — Met Life is leaving Queens Plaza:

Five years ago, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company announced plans to move most of its Manhattan employees to Long Island City in a much-ballyhooed effort to establish a low-cost business district in Queens and stem the flow of white-collar jobs to New Jersey. In return, the Giuliani administration granted the company $26.4 million in tax breaks.

Now it is planning a trip back across the East River. Within the next several days, MetLife is expected to sign a tentative deal to move the bulk of its 1,700 workers back to Manhattan, into a 42nd Street skyscraper — the former Verizon Building — where the rents are at least triple what it pays in Queens, according to city officials and executives working with the company.

. . .

Under the terms of the original deal, the city could demand that the company repay two times the roughly $12 million in incentives it has used up to now.

. . .

City Councilman Eric Gioia, who represents the neighborhood, said he regretted the insurer’s decision. But, he added: “They got a lot of taxpayer benefits to move here. The city should recoup every dime.”

According to the article, it’s not the rank and file that will benefit from the move but rather the senior executives who found Queens Plaza distasteful:

Senior company executives apparently found the gritty Queens neighborhood lacking in good restaurants and too far from Midtown, though it is a few subway stops away. The company also complained that an early-morning bus dropped off prisoners released from Rikers Island jails on a street corner about four blocks away from its front door.

Senior executives and about 1,200 other employees would move to the former Verizon Building, a 41-story skyscraper overlooking Bryant Park at 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas. Real estate executives say that annual rents in the tower, which is undergoing a $260 million makeover, are about $80 per square foot.

Manhattan snobs!

See also: Always Poised But Never Actually Burgeoning.

Location Scout: Queens Plaza.