Pharmaceutical company Novartis Gene Therapies released new details last week about its plans to open two new facilities in Morrisville.
Under an incentive agreement, the company—which plans to build a 56,000-square-foot facility, and upfit an additional 200,000-square-feet in the Pathway Triangle corporate campus—promised last year to invest more than $200 million and create 100 new jobs in the town.
Whether Novartis lives up to those promises will determine if it gets an estimated $2.3 million in tax breaks from Morrisville over eight years. And as the town council looks towards the future, it’s considering making it easier for companies, large and small, to get those kinds of tax breaks.
Deals That Fell Apart
While the life sciences industry continues to grow in North Carolina, especially around Research Triangle Park, some companies have found their incentive agreements cancelled in recent years for failing to meet hiring requirements.
About six months before Novartis announced its new Morrisville facility, one of the company’s older incentive agreements with the state was cancelled, after it fell short of its goal to create 200 new jobs at an existing manufacturing center in Durham.
That didn’t seem to deter Novartis, which made new incentive agreements in 2025 with the state, Wake County, Durham, and Morrisville, pledging to expand the Durham facility and build new facilities in both Durham and Morrisville.
Another company, genetic testing enterprise Invitae, promised in 2021 to invest more than $100 million and create more than 300 jobs in Morrisville. Then last year, Invitae declared bankruptcy, and its incentive agreement with the state was cancelled.
Not all incentive agreements fail. But according to reporting from The News & Observer, most of the companies that have made incentive deals with the state since North Carolina began its job development investment grant (JDIG) program in 2003 have failed to meet investment or hiring goals.
From 2003 to 2021, the state made 66 incentive agreements with companies with projects in Wake County—10 of which are still active. Of the rest, 42 were terminated after companies failed to meet requirements, according to an analysis of public records by the INDY. Nearly 30 of those companies failed to meet hiring benchmarks specifically, while another 11, including Invitae, failed to make the required reports to the state.
Failing to meet incentive requirements doesn’t necessarily mean that the company itself is a failure. While some companies go out of business (like Invitae), others do open new facilities and create hundreds of new jobs, but fall a little short of the benchmarks for incentives (like Novartis). Morrisville’s incentives—like the state’s, Wake County’s, and some surrounding town’s—are “performance based,” meaning companies must meet the town’s requirements before it receives any payments.
“Economic development projects can change for many reasons, whether it’s business conditions, internal company decisions, market timing, or just revised project plans,” Tiffany McNeill, Morrisville’s economic development director, told the INDY.
Still, if companies aren’t delivering on their promises, why should the town make it easier to get incentives? On Tuesday, the Morrisville town council considered a proposal to lower the minimum investment and job creation thresholds for companies to get incentives.
With neighboring towns like Apex and Holly Springs also offering incentives, Morrisville is likely to be left behind if it doesn’t offer competitive deals, town council member Satish Garimella said during a February workshop. These changes would make the town a more attractive option as companies consider where to build new facilities or expand operations.
Most of the time, incentives are also package deals with the county and the state. So if Morrisville fails to keep up with its neighbors, “we’re no longer positioning ourselves to be competitive in the market,” McNeill said in February.
Life Sciences Are Here for the Long-Term
Despite headlines about incentive packages being cancelled, North Carolina’s life sciences industry is steadily growing, according to a 2025 report from the NC Biotechnology Center. From 2019 to 2023, the number of life sciences jobs in North Carolina grew by about 23%, per the report. In the same time span, the number of life sciences businesses increased by 43%.
Today, the life sciences industry directly employs more than 75,000 people statewide and includes more than 900 companies with operations in North Carolina, according to the report and the NC Biotech Company Directory. Over 600 are in Wake County, including about 80 in Morrisville.
It’s regional growth, but “Morrisville is at the heart of it all,” said Ryan Timms, chair of the life sciences committee for the Morrisville Chamber of Commerce. Since 2021, companies with projects in Morrisville have announced they will invest more than $630 million and create more than 1,200 jobs in the town, according to data from NC Biotech.
The NC Biotech report explains there was a hiring boom post-COVID as companies “responded to the pandemic-related challenges with rapid advancements in life sciences and biotech innovations.”
But then, in 2022, “the economic landscape shifted with rising inflation, rising interest rates, and downturns in public markets,” the report states. “Life sciences companies and investors turned significantly more cautious,” which may explain slowdowns in hiring and expansion.
Timms, however, remains optimistic and thinks Morrisville will see “economic development and a different type of entrepreneurial growth over the next five to 10 years.” Decisions to build a new facility, like the Novartis one in Morrisville, are often “years in the making,” he said.
“The potential for long term economic impact outpaces short term struggles with policy.”
Morrisville Considers Incentives Changes
Morrisville’s current economic development policy was created in 2006, about 20 years ago, so it’s overdue for an update.
The proposed changes, for example, “add retention safeguards,” McNeill said, so companies have to retain their existing full-time workforce while adding new jobs to be eligible for incentives.
Overall, the new policy would make it easier for companies the town wants to attract to get tax breaks. The proposal includes a new “innovation” category, with a requirement to invest $2 million (down from $5-10 million) and create 20 new jobs (down from 50). Eligible for these incentives are companies in five industries the town is “targeting:” advanced manufacturing, business & financial services, clean energy, life sciences, and technology.
“We’re not saying we won’t incentivize a project that doesn’t fit in that category, but these are the projects that take priority when we’re looking to review for potential incentives,” McNeill said at the Tuesday meeting.
The new structure also makes it easier for a company to open a smaller facility in Morrisville which could later expand, according to McNeill. It encourages companies with the potential to grow to base their operations in Morrisville.
Incentive requirements for companies that build new facilities, or existing businesses that expand, would also be lowered under the new policy. The steepest requirements and biggest incentives are for projects involving new corporate headquarters’, which would have to invest $5 million and create 50 new jobs to be eligible for the town’s tax breaks.
Morrisville’s proposed policy lowers investment thresholds, bringing them down closer to the $3 million minimums in Apex and Fuquay-Varina.
During the April 28 town council meeting, Garimella questioned whether the town could also incentivize retail projects, like grocery and department stores.
“It is important for people to also understand that Morrisville is not just for Bitcoin,” he said, adding that businesses like the Sam’s Club (which closed in 2018) can also be “economic engines” for the town.
Council member Harrison Kesling added the town should encourage companies that pay employees a high wage, and perhaps look at incentivizing worker co-ops. (Morrisville’s current and proposed incentive policies each require companies to pay workers, on average, 110% of the average Wake County annual salary, which this year is around $80,000.)
Kesling’s statement echoed discussion at the February work session, where he raised concerns about incentivizing companies with a high disparity between the lowest-paid and the highest-paid workers.
“We’re not here to offer incentives to everybody,” council member Liz Johnson said at the February work session. “We’re here to offer incentives to those companies and corporations that are going to set roots here in Morrisville, be corporate citizens, and continue to invest and grow.”
“We don’t have a problem getting corporations to come here on their own,” she added, “so if we’re going to pay out an incentive, they need to rise above the rest.”
A public hearing on the proposed incentive policy is scheduled for May 12, after which the town council is expected to vote on the proposal.
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