Amazon to bring 5,000 jobs to Nashville
Talent pool along with incentives sealed deal
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – As Amazon announced its second headquarters will be located in New York City and Northern Virginia, the e-commerce giant also announced it is investing $230 million in Nashville and adding 5,000 jobs at a new operations site.
The new Amazon site will be located at Nashville Yards, located downtown. The Nashville Yards site, near Interstate 40, includes plans for a massive complex of hotels, shops, restaurants, apartments, offices and a 1.3-acre park.
The announcement comes more than a year after Amazon said it was scoping cities for a second headquarters and received 238 bids for the designation. The investment in Nashville marks a significant jobs gain for the city.
“We realized that it would make a lot of sense for us to have an Eastern United States regional hub for our operations business, and Nashville just really impressed us in the HQ2 process,” Amazon Senior Vice President Jay Carney said. “It’s a city pointing toward the future. It made itself very appealing for investment. It’s a place where, if people don’t already live there, they are excited about moving there. That’s always an important issue for us.”
The Nashville jobs will include management and tech-focused jobs, including software developers, with earnings expected to average $150,000, Carney said. He expected to recruit locally and from outside of the area.
“It has never been clearer that Tennessee is a great place to do business, and we continue to attract a wide variety of global companies that provide high-paying, quality jobs for our residents,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said in a statement.
The new site, dubbed the Operations Center of Excellence, will be responsible for the company’s customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain and other similar activities.
“These are quality, high-paying jobs that will boost our economy, provide our workers with new opportunities, and show the rest of the world that Nashville is a premiere location for business in- vestment,” Nashville Mayor David Briley said in a statement.
Amazon said it will receive performance-based incentives of up to $102 million based on the company creating
5,000 jobs with average wages greater than $150,000. That includes a $65 million cash grant for capital expenditures from the state over the next seven years, or $13,000 per job. It also includes a $15 million cash grant from Metro Nashville over the next seven years, based on
$500 for each job. A nearly $22 million job tax credit will offset franchise and excise taxes from Tennessee as well.
Amazon said incentives weighed in its decisions for sites but said talent was the biggest factor.
“Economic incentives were one factor in our decision – but attracting top talent was the leading driver,” the company said in a release.
Nashville Area Chamber of Com- merce CEO Ralph Schulz emphasized the high wages as a win for Nashville and said he expects the company to hire from the middle Tennessee region. He said 5,000 jobs is a “pretty good fit” compared with the 50,000 jobs the city was initialing pursuing as a second headquarters.
“It would have been a challenge over time,” he said. “The 5,000 is a good fit in lots of ways, not just in size.”
In a November letter to Amazon officials, Briley pointed to Nashville’s lowtax environment, high quality of living, university presence and “talented and diverse workforce.”
“This investment will have a significant impact on the community in which it locates,” Briley wrote. “Buildings, roads, parks and greenways will be built. Jobs will be created. But most importantly, the lives of human beings will be transformed.”