For the first time, the city of Tampa has made the top five in a national ranking of cities where businesses seek to set up corporate headquarters.
According to the latest rankings from Site Selection Magazine, released earlier this month, Tampa landed in a four-way tie for the fifth most desirable city with Richmond, Kansas City and Houston.
The magazine says it surveyed 30 of the country’s leading national site consultants to come up with its rankings. The publication selected Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte and Dallas, respectively, as the cities with the “best business climate in America.”
This is the first time Tampa has ever made the list, according to city officials. Site Selection cited Tampa’s favorable tax climate, highly skilled workforce, direct foreign investments and quality of life among the factors that tipped the city into top five territory this year.
“This milestone is a reflection of the momentum our community has built together,” Mayor Jane Castor says in a release. “We’re creating an environment where businesses thrive, families succeed and big ideas feel right at home.”
The mayor points to major redevelopment projects throughout the city that are connecting communities with its urban core; a significant investment in public spaces and amenities; and an influx of small and large businesses as a few of the reasons why Tampa stands apart as a desirable place to live and work.
According to Global Tampa Bay, a regional collaborative between the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council, Pinellas County Economic Development and the Pasco Economic Development Council, the combined Tampa Bay region is home to 19 corporate headquarters, seven of which are Fortune 1000 companies. Together, those companies bring in more than $1 billion in annual revenue, Global Tampa Bay says.
In the study from Site Selection, Mitchel Allen, the senior vice president of economic development at the Tampa Economic Development Council, points not only to the city’s sunny waterfront climate as a draw for businesses, but also its favorable tax climate and friendly business community, which have drawn companies such as AquaFence, Wagamama, Orion Edge, Kforce, Amazon, Citigroup and USAA to the region in recent years.
AquaFence, a Norwegian company, is among the latest to move to Tampa, making the city its second major U.S. office location last fall after saving Tampa General Hospital from flooding during Hurricane Helene.
Patrik Hansson, chief revenue officer for AquaFence, told Site Selection that “after hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024, we decided that our next office would be somewhere in Florida. We already had existing clients in Tampa. Every time we came back to Tampa, we felt more and more at home.”
The company still maintains a head U.S. office in Hoboken, New Jersey but says the American headquarters will eventually shift to Tampa completely.
“In January 2025, our CEO in Oslo spent a lot of time on the Florida West Coast,” Hansson tells Site Selector. We spent a lot of time between Naples and Tampa. There are close to five million people in the Tampa Bay area, but Tampa still has a small-town feel. The businesses here genuinely wanted to help. They all asked, ‘What can we do to help you?’ Right off the bat, we felt at home. That made it easy for us to decide that this will be our next home.”