“We did not enter into this without a lot of thought and without a lot of advice,” said Carr, who is also a retired professor of public administration and policy analysis at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. “We realized if we did nothing, we probably would have had an empty rusted hulk of a building, and people would have said, ‘Oh, remember what used to be’ .... Now we have jobs coming in, we have investment coming in. Sure, we gave away tax revenue, but zero dollars versus some dollars, I would go with taking some revenue.”

Some of the companies lured to Hazelwood have been from outside the region, such as Massachusetts-based Quiet Logistics, which said in April it planned to open a distribution center in the Hazelwood Logistics Center and hire about 250 full-time employees.

Others, though, have moved from existing facilities in the region, such as Bunzl Distribution USA. The food packaging distributor said it would move about 70 employees from its distribution center in Maryland Heights to one of the warehouses also being leased by Amazon.com. The company, with corporate offices in Creve Coeur, said it had been looking for new warehouse space, and Cox said Hazelwood provided it with a $750,000 forgivable loan.