[hguant]

It's my understanding that Amazon had a lot of difficulty working with the city's unions, owing to the latter's opposition to Amazon's anti-union stance. The unions had a lot of support from the local councilpersons and community activists you spoke of.

Right before the Amazon pull out, there were several meetings between Amazon, labour/union reps, and government officials (according to NPR). It's all a black box, but my guess is that either the unions or Amazon wanted some sort of contractual guarantee the other was unwilling to budge on, and the local governance sided with the unions.