Citigroup is rolling out the red carpet for Amazon's move to the New York City area by moving more than 1,000 employees out of its Queens office tower to accommodate the e-commerce giant.
Citi has been consolidating its New York area staff anyway, moving workers to its headquarters in glitzy Tribeca and other locations. It has already planned a move out of the Queens location but has accelerated the plan. On Tuesday, the banking giant said it would move 1,100 workers from its tower in Long Island City to other locations in the first half of next year "to make room for Amazon."
"Given what it would mean to New York and Long Island City to have Amazon establish a significant presence here, we want to do our part to make this possible," said Citi CEO Michael Corbat in a statement.
The tower at One Court Square, bearing Citi's name on the top, opened nearly 30 years ago and has been home to various Citi units. The move represents roughly one-third of its 3,000 employees who work in the tower in about 1 million square feet of office space. The bank had already indicated plans to move most of its workers out of the location by 2020.
After a year of suspense, Seattle-based Amazon finally revealed its choice for a second headquarters on Tuesday. It is splitting the location between Long Island City and a site in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a home in D.C. and also owns The Washington Post.
WATCH: How Amazon has changed the Seattle skyline in the last 3 years
