If you haven’t heard, Nashville landed quite the consolation prize from Amazon’s search for a new headquarters location. When you look past the “smaller operations center” spin, what Amazon will locate in Nashville is hardly a consolation. Nashville came out the winner even over D.C.’s and New York’s Solomon like victories. What Nashville won plays to its strengths and, equally importantly, shapes its future. The incentives required by Nashville pale in comparison to the checks the winners will write. The Amazon package arriving in Nashville will allow the city to manage its growth with minimal impact on other employers, neighborhoods, and Nashville’s increasingly eclectic vibe. And the workforce that Amazon will build only enhances that of two vibrant industry clusters that Nashville has been working hard to grow. Simply put, Nashville skunked the rest of us.
