New York Post, Friday, March 13, 2020nypost.comTwo GOP senators intro-
duced a bill aimed at ban-
ning federal employees from
using Chinese social media
app TikTok on their govern-
ment-issued phones, amid
growing national security
concerns around the collec-
tion and sharing of data on
US users with China’s
government. Reuters
By Jennifer Gould KeilJing Fong, the city’s larg-
est Chinese restaurant, has
closed.
After 48 years in business,
the iconic restaurant known
for its classic dim sum
carts, is shuttering due to a
slowdown triggered by the
coronavirus outbreak, said
Claudia Leo, the restau-
rant’s marketing director.
The decision was made on
Thursday, following Gov.
Cuomo’s announcement
that gatherings of 500 peo-
ple or more will be banned.
Jing Fong on Elizabeth
Street has almost 800 seats.
It was founded in 1972 by
the grandfather of the cur-
rent owner, Truman Lam.
A smaller outpost of the
eatery on the Upper West
Side will remain open.
“We were going back and
forth on what to do all day,”
Leo said, adding that they
considered “shrinking” the
seating to less than half its
full capacity.
“It is all happening very
fast. We were trying to take it
all in. It is the best decision
for everyone’s sake,” she
said.
Leo added they hope to
reopen in the future.
[email protected]
By Noah Manskar
A Chinese company has a new idea
to prevent the coronavirus from
spreading: Eat your lunch in a paper
box.
Food-delivery firm Meituan is re-
portedly giving out a paper “shield” to
help customers in China keep germs
off their plates in crowded offices or
cafeterias.
The shield unfolds into a 20-inch,
box-shaped “independent space” that
covers the diner’s meal while they eat,
reports say.
Meituan is providing them to eight
restaurant chains to include with de-liveries in Beijing and Shanghai in
tests that launched this week, the
South China Morning Post reported
Thursday.
“It can effectively block the possible
pollution of droplets when eating in a
relatively densely populated area,”
Meituan told the outlet in a state-
ment.
“With the help of the shields, com-
muters who return to work can ‘eat
alone’ easily,” Meituan said.
The Beijing-based company will also
provide medical workers in Wuhan —
the epicenter of the coronavirus out-
break — with free protective covers,
for which Meituan has applied for twonational patents, according to CNBC.
The coronavirus outbreak has re-
portedly taken a toll on China’s food
delivery companies as it has disrupted
the country’s economy and sickened
more than 80,000 people there.
Many people in China continue to
work from home and businesses have
not fully reopened, CNBC reported.
China’s food delivery apps had some
30 million daily active users prior to
the late-January Lunar New Year holi-
day.
The number of daily users has fallen
by half during the course of the pan-
demic, according to the South China
Morning Post. [email protected]Diners get to nosh out of a box
Home rental company
Airbnb’s bookings in major
cities across the world have
taken a blow due to corona-
virus-fueled uncertainty in
the travel industry, data
from Airbnb analytics firm
AirDNA shows.
Daily reservations fell in
cities such as Beijing, Seoul,
Rome and Milan through-
out January and February.
COVID-19 will have an im-
pact in the near-term, but
travel is resilient and will
rebound, Airbnb said in a
blog. ReutersAirbnb’s biz
takes a hit
Dim sum
options
dwindle
Senators flock
to TikTok block
Truman Lam
Chinatown’s Jing Fong closes. By Lisa Fickenscher
Amazon is shelling out
$1.15 billion in cash to ac-
quire the former Lord &
Taylor flagship in Mid-
town Manhattan, The Post
has learned.
The Fifth Avenue land-
mark, which spans 11 sto-
ries and 660,000 square
feet, will serve as Ama-
zon’s New York City
headquarters, housing
several thousand employ-
ees in the coming years, a
source close to the situa-
tion said.
That’s a switch from the
plan two years ago, when
the former department-
store space had been
leased by WeWork to be-
come the office-sharing
startup’s own headquar-
ters. WeWork’s plans fell
apart last fall, when the
company, co-founded by
Adam Neumann, became
engulfed in a slew of scan-
dals that derailed its bid
to go public.
Indeed, the lion’s share
of the deal consists of
Amazon paying off $750
million in construction
loans taken out for We-
Work’s lavish renovation
of the space, sources said.
The remainder consists of
more than $350 million in
equity for the building’s
current owners.
WeWork has waived any
economic interest in the
building in exchange forgetting out of the lease,
and Adam Neumann will
not make any money on
the deal, sources said. Am-
azon is paying effectively
more than $2,000 per
square foot for the Mid-
town property, according
to a source.
Amazon had been inon-again, off-again talks
for the past several
months with the build-
ing’s owners, which in-
clude a joint venture be-
tween WeWork’s parent
company and the hedge
fund Rhone Capital; and
Hudson’s Bay Co., the
owner of Saks Fifth Ave-nue, sources said. The
consortium bought the
building for $850 million
in late 2017.
Over the past 60 days,
the talks heated up as Am-
azon saw rivals pursuing
their own Big Apple deals.
While Facebook has been
in talks to lease the700,000-square-foot Far-
ley Building, Apple last
month inked a lease for
220,000 square feet at 11
Penn Plaza.
“Jeff Bezos toured three
properties in Manhattan
at Hudson Yards, the Far-
ley and the Lord & Taylor
property, and he chose
Fifth Avenue,” a source
with knowledge of the
deal told The Post.
The building is the lat-
est space to get scooped
up by Amazon after the
Seattle-based e-tailing gi-
ant scrapped plans a year
ago to build a second
headquarters in New York
City.
In December, Amazon
leased 335,000 square feet
in Hudson Yards, with
plans to house 1,500 em-
ployees there. Amazon
also has reportedly been
in talks to lease 400,000
square feet of additional
space at 460 W. 34th St.
Nevertheless, the recent
deals are a far cry from
the campus Amazon had
envisioned building in
Long Island City, which
would have spanned more
than 4 million square feet
and housed 25,000 em-
ployees.
Amazon had scrapped
plans for the so-called
HQ2 headquarters in
Queens amid a backlash
over incentives it was get-
ting from local politicians.
Amazon and WeWork
didn’t respond to requests
for comment.
[email protected]Amazon on fifth
Bezos snapping up landmark for $1.15 billion
One massive package
Beloved landmark Lord & Taylor
(pictured) will become the
New York City headquarters
for Amazon — run by CEO
Jeff Bezos (right) —
following a cash deal
worth $1.15 billion,
according to
sources.Christopher Sadowski, Getty ImagesEXCLUSIVE