I'm not sure it is. There was always a suspicion that Amazon knew from day one they wanted to open a HQ in NYC—they just put on this show to get cities into a bidding war to provide the biggest tax break. I don't imagine the publicity around having NYC tax-payers subsidize the world's richest man's business dealings is positive.
Amazon also got a lot of free, confidential data on growth prospects from midsize to large cities all across the US, which would be useful for planning other facilities like warehouses and retail outlets like Whole Foods.
Weird.