As Apex Town Council members discussed the town’s economic future, some lamented the state’s budget deadlock. Negotiations in the General Assembly have been stalled since July of last year, with no end in sight despite the budget now being more than eight months overdue.
“A state budget would be great,” council member Shane Reese said Tuesday, towards the end of a nearly four-hour work session on economic development. “And I joke, but only half, because that offers us the stability that allows us to move forward.”
Ironically, one of the factors that had been holding up the state budget was a recent, big economic victory for the town: the new NC Children’s Hospital to be built at the intersection of US-1 and NC-540. The hospital—which will be the second largest in the country when completed—will engage in research and education backed by Duke and UNC Health. State senators originally asked for an additional $638 million in the budget to support the project, but drastically cut back that ask after talks with the House stalled. The hospital is expected to bring nearly 8,000 jobs to Apex and Wake County.
When it comes to growth, there’s a long list of things Apex is doing right, according to East Carolina University economic development experts Charles Hayes and Don Parks, who presented to council members during the work session. But there are also major economic headwinds that are impacting cities and towns across the country. Even something as simple as uncertainty—in how government regulations might change, how much public money will be available—can discourage businesses from hiring or expanding.
Uncertainty over Government Regulations and Funding
When it comes to attracting, retaining and growing business in Apex, officials have learned not to count on the state and federal funding that was previously more dependable. “Government instability” was mentioned more than once as a concerning trend the town would need to find a way to deal with.
President Donald Trump’s 2025 funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Institutes for Health (NIH), among others, resulted in widespread layoffs across the Triangle among residents who worked for those agencies or places that benefitted from their grants and contracts—especially at nearby Research Triangle Park.
Since Trump made those cuts, Hayes estimated the region has lost $300 million in research funding and as a result nine to 12 jobs for each million dollars—about 3,000 jobs.
Trump’s tariffs have made it difficult for many industries to engage in the global trade they need to do business, while his dismantling of the EPA and NIH have undermined environmental protection, healthcare research, and green energy.
“A lot of the grants and funding, and maybe even the regulatory backbone that we were looking for at the federal or state level, have been rolled back,” said council member Edward Gray. “We find ourselves trying to figure out how we can maintain regional, multi-governmental partnerships with, say, our county or other local municipalities, in order to help fill that gap.”
AI Is Everywhere
According to Hayes and Parks, Apex town council members should also be concerned about the impact of advanced technology and artificial intelligence on jobs.
“Manufacturing is yielding less jobs than we ever thought it would,” said Parks, explaining that a company’s initial promise of 500 new jobs could later decrease to 200, as automation and robotics take over tasks previously performed by employees.
“We’ve moved a long way from the industrial revolution,” said Parks. “So when we think about future jobs and making choices on what we’re trying to attract, this is an element. What will be there in terms of manufacturing, distribution?”
As technology advances, however, Apex hopes to capitalize on emerging industries. According to the town’s economic development director Joanna Helms, staff are hoping to attract businesses involved in advanced manufacturing, information technology, life sciences, and clean technology, as well as entrepreneurs.
Towns across the country are seeing job loss from AI, but the most recent debate in Apex was over how a proposed data center would affect quality of life. And that’s also a key factor in economic competitiveness, said Parks.
Apex’s long list of accolades (one of the best small cities in America, etc), is among its most notable characteristics when it comes to attracting potential employers and employees. Quality of life is “sometimes overlooked in economic development strategies we see, but for a place like Apex, it’s a key distinguishing characteristic,” Parks said.
Town council members discussed a wide variety of concerns during the work session, touching on established worries about the sustainability of rapid growth, the need to protect the Apex’s “small town feel,” housing affordability, the local job market, and challenges facing small businesses.
A Good Problem to Have
Looking to the future, staff and council members talked about the need to continue building up infrastructure, including the preparation of specific sites for industrial development. Staff members also discussed the need for more commercial real estate, given Apex’s low vacancy rate.
Helms mentioned that one of the reasons Apex has lost out on big projects to neighboring towns is because it lacks large tracts of land for sale. While businesses might be able to build a new facility, they won’t own the land.
“This is why Holly Springs has a lot of life science and we don’t, because they had hundreds of acres of land for sale,” Helms said.
Council members and staff also talked about the need to continue recruiting a diverse mix of businesses, so the town can withstand economic downturns. In addition, some said, Apex should look at attracting businesses that support major industries, like financial services and suppliers.
Ultimately, though, the meeting ended with a conversation about reckoning with Apex’s success. The town is in a strong place when it comes to getting large businesses to invest in the area—life sciences company ApiJect announced in January it would open a new manufacturing facility in Apex, bringing more than 100 new jobs, according to Helms. Construction workers also recently broke ground for the first building at Veridea, a 1,200-acre sustainable, mixed-use development (and future home of the NC Children’s Hospital).
The question is how to reconcile that growth with residents’ concerns (and in some cases, coordinated pushback).
“We recognize that if you create growth, we’re going to get a little bit of that residential resistance. Folks don’t like growth,” said Gray.
“So it’s a messaging problem for us …[How we’re going] to convince the residents here that change isn’t bad. That we are building in the infrastructure necessary to support that sort of growth—whether that’s roadway, sewers, land spacing, addressing the affordability issues so that we can attract the right workers.”
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