City’s new leader wants to rethink costly incentives used to lure companies as residents complain about housing prices, traffic
By John D. Stoll, Wall Street Journal, NASHVILLE— This city has been a poster child for economic development, the good and the bad.
Tax breaks and cash incentives have flowed. Tourists, sports teams and conventioneers have come. Hotels and restaurants have bloomed. And now Amazon.com Inc., among the most-sought-after employers, is erecting a pair of towers downtown to house 5,000 new employees, a move the company promises will “further the resilience, the vibrancy and just the overall coolness” of a place once known only for music.
With coolness comes clutter. I’ve been traveling here since my brother moved to Tennessee in 2004. Over 15 years, the population has grown by 19 people a day on average—from 588,512 residents in 2003 to 692,587 in 2018—as folks stream in to take jobs in health care, autos, banking and more.
Home prices rose; public services sputtered; traffic clogged. Growing pains are now as plentiful as the honky-tonks lining the city’s Broadway.
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John Cooper, a 63-year-old real-estate developer, won Nashville’s recent mayoral race by nearly 40 percentage points, promising to curb the subsidies that lure big business. Skyscrapers and luxury housing developments are everywhere, yet city leaders can’t balance a budget. (read more)
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