Are high-tech players keeping their word on facilities and jobs?

Friday, April 21, 2023, Vol. 47, No. 17
By Joe Morris

State and local leaders couldn’t hold press conferences fast enough when major players such as Asurion, Amazon and Oracle announced expansions to, or within, the Nashville area. Gaudy numbers abounded, from employee count to economic impact.

The pandemic put a pause on many of these ambitious projects, and this year’s downturn in the tech sector – both in terms of layoffs and banking uncertainty – has spurred some worry.

If they’re not here, will they still come? And if they are here, will they meet the goals they set and for which they were promised significant public dollars?

Amazon

After announcing a $230 million operations hub (Center of Excellence) in late 2018 and an accompanying 5,000 jobs, Amazon got cash-for-jobs grants from both Metro and state governments. The state kicked in $65 million, or $13,000 per job, while Metro tacked on $3,000 per employee and another $15 million.

The money is tied to hires being made within seven years, and the clock began ticking in 2021. So Amazon has until Jan. 1, 2029, to make good.

The company also said it would have 2,500 of those people hired by 2021, a goal it achieved.

Construction on two towers began on the Church Street-based Nashville Yards complex in 2019. The 28-story “Juno” Frankie Pierce tower was completed in 2022, following the 20-story Anne Dallas Dudley building in 2021.

However, the building’s interiors don’t reflect their finalized outsides. Amazon has been shedding jobs across the enterprise and has so been rejiggering the interiors of the Juno building to reflect a continued remote workforce, and still capitalize on the footprint that has made it the eighth-largest employer in Middle Tennessee.

“While we’re completing construction of the shell and core of the second tower, we’re pausing the build out of the interiors of the traditional working floors as we reevaluate designs to provide the best workspaces possible for our employees,” Amazon spokesperson Zach Goldsztejn says. “There are currently 3,200 corporate and tech employees at Amazon Nashville.”

Oracle

Earlier this year, Oracle grew its temporary footprint downtown to 100,000 square feet. The 11th Avenue North location is its local base of operations as it continues finalizing plans for a $1.35 billion riverfront office campus on the Cumberland River’s east bank just opposite Germantown.

It has not released information regarding a construction and opening timetable yet.

Although the company has been laying off some of its workforce, including staffers in Nashville, it has announced no plans regarding the new campus. Oracle has engaged in several hefty financial packages since announcing the Nashville development, including giving Mero up to $175 million to help fund part of the city’s planned East Bank development.

That deal, structured in May 2021, allows Nashville to repay Oracle via lower property taxes over 25 years. In September of that year, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development gave Oracle $65 million for construction and land acquisition. Oracle, for its part, has promised to create almost 5,000 net new jobs over five years.

Asurion

In early 2022 Asurion, the world’s largest provider of technology-protection support, opened a new headquarters in Nashville Yards, completing a $285 million project and rehoming more than 2,000 employees from four locations around the city. The company continues to evaluate and evolve its workplace policies, and related space-configuration opportunities, says Bettie Colombo, company spokesperson.

“Our goal was to create an environment where employees could work, meet, and collaborate. Without a doubt, the space has achieved our goals. Prior to the pandemic, Asurion allowed flexibility regarding work location and hasn’t made any changes to its remote work policy since,” Colombo says.

“Today, we have some employees back in the office full time and others are in the office two or three days a week, likely contributing to the longer commutes we seem to have Tuesday through Thursday.

“As employees returned to the office post-pandemic, we evaluated daily occupancy and consolidated employees within the building to create more density and further networking opportunities,” she adds. “This has freed up three floors in one of the towers, which are now available for sublease.”