Tucked alongside today's announcement that Amazon will open major outposts in New York City and Arlington, Va., the corporate behemoth also unveiled plans to open an East Coast operations hub in Nashville that will bring 5,000 new corporate jobs with it.
It's not the so-called HQ2, which Nashville and numerous other cities have eagerly sought to attract for the past year, but according to Gov. Bill Haslam's office it is the "single largest jobs commitment made by a company in Tennessee’s history."
As you might expect, they're not coming just because they love Nashville. The company says it will receive up to $102 million in performance-based incentives, including: a $65 million cash grant from the state for capital expenditures over the next 7 years, equivalent to $13,000 per job; a $15 million cash grant from Metro Nashville over the next seven years, or $500 for each job; and a job tax credit worth nearly $22 million from the state that will offset franchise and excise taxes.
The Nashville hub — which will represent a $230 million investment by Amazon — is (seriously) to be called the Operations Center of Excellence.
In a prepared statement, Haslam called the news "a game changer for Tennessee."
