When private hospital giant HCA won more than $70 million in taxpayer incentives from state and Nashville officials in 2014, it committed to building a gleaming office tower in the North Gulch neighborhood and creating more than 1,000 new jobs there.

The company built the tower. But in September 2018 — three months before a deadline for job creation — HCA persuaded state officials to change the terms of the deal.

Now HCA can count new jobs at other facilities in Davidson County or six surrounding counties toward the requirement for the state’s $7.5 million grant. It also can count people who work remotely and report to those other facilities. Before, the new jobs had to be based at the building on Charlotte Avenue, including any telecommuters reporting to supervisors at that site.

State officials originally approved the taxpayer funds to stimulate hiring through the new building’s construction. By shifting the definition, HCA can come up short in its initial hiring commitments for the building and still receive the FastTrack grant funds for other expansions.

The new terms were finalized by the Nashville Industrial Development Board, which approved the deal last month.

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Some have criticized officials' willingness to bend to the company's needs.

"Decisions affecting millions of our tax dollars are being made by these small boards without much public attention or input," said Anne Barnette, the co-chair of Stand Up Nashville, a labor-backed group critical of economic development incentives. "Corporations like HCA are over-inflating their projections to receive lucrative incentives and aren't held accountable when they fail to make good on their promises."

An HCA representative said the subsidiaries have created “more than 600 jobs” in Davidson County, including some at buildings other than the North Gulch property. If the company falls short of the 1,000-job commitment for the $7.5 million state grant, it will receive an amount proportional to the number of qualifying jobs. HCA hasn’t yet drawn any of the grant funds.

The company would not allow any of its executives or managers to be interviewed for this story.

HCA subsidiaries at 1100 Charlotte covered by the incentives include the company’s cancer research center, Sarah Cannon, and the two health care back-office providers, Parallon Business Solutions and HealthTrust.

Nashville also changed the definition for its jobs grant

This isn’t the first time that HCA has renegotiated taxpayer incentives for the subsidiaries at 1100 Charlotte.

The Metro Council approved a grant in 2014 that would give the company $500 annually for each new job at the project, over seven years. A year later, when HCA announced it would move some employees to two other office campuses in Davidson County, Metro amended the agreement to include those properties as well.

The company relocated workers to the former Dell Campus near Nashville International Airport and to office buildings on Old Hickory Boulevard near Brentwood. Some employees came from neighboring Williamson County.

Local economic development officials say incentives are a smart investment, and they pay for themselves through increased tax revenue generated by the company and its employees. Matt Wiltshire, director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development, said the city modified the jobs grant in 2015 because HCA was considering locations outside the county and Tennessee.

“We thought that without the incentive they wouldn’t come here,” Wiltshire said.

For the state's part, officials are satisfied as long as the companies are creating jobs in Tennessee— whether it's on Charlotte Avenue or elsewhere, said Scott Harrison, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

“HCA is still bound to create the same number of jobs at the same level of average occupational wage,” Harrison said in an email. “Due to changes in their business plans, some of the people employed for this expansion are in different locations within Davidson County.”

The largest incentive associated with the 1100 Charlotte building is a property tax abatement worth up to $60 million over 20 years. Metro Nashville says that HCA is on track for job creation targets linked to that subsidy. That contract includes new employees at the subsidiaries’ suppliers, in addition to workers at the companies themselves. In a December report to Metro the company reported it created 1,529 jobs in Davidson County.

Reach Mike Reicher at mreicher@tennessean.com or 615-259-8228 and on Twitter @mreicher.