NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Located in the heart of the Tennessee valley, the Nashville region is where businesses thrive.

It’s why national, even global, corporations continue packing their things for a move to Music City.

“Our skyline seems to have a whole host of cranes,” Bob Rolfe said, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

It’s true. Look up and you’ll see a host of cranes, showing that Nashville’s growth isn’t slowing.

“People want to build Middle Tennessee and they’re doing it in a way that’s really forward looking,” said Seth Bernstein, CEO at AllianceBernstein.

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce said it best: The Nashville region has established itself as one of the most desirable headquarters and corporate office locations in America.

According to Fortune, as of 2021, the Nashville region was home to 11 Fortune 1,000 companies, including five fortune 500 headquarters.

And these companies are coming from all over.

In 2021, The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development received 33 project commitments from foreign-owned businesses; resulting in 4,889 job commitments and $892 million in capital investment. These major foreign projects included French-owned Capgemini America Inc. (500 new jobs, $20.1 million in capital investment), Danish-owned Hydro-Gear Limited Partnership (375 new jobs, $10 million in capital investment), and Japanese-owned NTT DATA Services, LLC (350 new jobs, $9.9 million in capital investment).

“I clearly think the city has gotten more interesting more diverse a larger international community people who are moving here from places all over the world and all-over different part of the united states,” said former Nashville mayor Karl Dean.

Many of the people and companies that are moving here are coming from New York and California.

“This really took off once alliance Bernstein said I’m leaving midtown Manhattan picking up my headquarters and coming to Nashville…everybody looked around and said ‘what did they just do? what do they know that we don’t know?'” Rolfe said.

So we asked Bernstein himself.

“We just thought Nashville stood out and we still think it stands out,” the CEO said.

Nearly four years after announcing its relocation plans from the Big Apple to Nashville, Alliance Bernstein, a global investment management firm, officially unveiled its corporate headquarters on May 3, 2022.

It’s a move many disputed.

“Look, I think the concern they expressed was you going to be able to get the kind of talent there that you need to be successful and i think its been clear we’ve been able to do that,” Bernstein said.

Amazon and Oracle are prime examples; one is bringing 5,000 jobs to the city, the other, 8,500, respectively.

“I don’t think it’s an accident that Oracle followed Amazon for example in coming here because there’s going to be a deep pool of talent in technology space now, which I think is really going to be exciting for the city,” Bernstein said.

Butch Spyridon, CEO of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp agrees, saying these two companies are going to prove very valuable to us in the future.

“I think Oracle and Amazon are the next generation leaders, taking us from automotive prominence, not leaving that behind, but entering the more tech sector, higher paying jobs, a different kind of workforce,” Spyridon said.

They’re bringing in a workforce and influx of millennials, as is iheartmedia, Mitsubishi Motors, Facebook, Kaiser Aluminum, Augusut Bioservices and many, many more.

These outside influences are reshaping our skyline, the business we do and the way we live.

“I think one of the things that i believe is that the cities that are going to succeed now and in the future are going to be the cities that are diverse the cities that embrace diversity and the cities that are welcoming,” Dean said.

Welcoming outsiders, in is how we became the “It City,” the goal now, is to keep “it” up.