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Morrisville sweetened its deal with Novartis as the Swiss drugmaker expanded its investment in town. It also lowered two of the requirements the company must meet to qualify for the nearly doubled incentive.
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Novartis does not get the town’s estimated $4.51 million incentive upfront. The company must meet performance requirements and pay its property taxes before Morrisville returns a portion of those taxes through eight payments, with the first currently expected in 2031.
Mayor TJ Cawley and town staff say the project will bring a $451 million investment, 180 jobs and an estimated $12.6 million in property-tax revenue over eight years. Labor and budget-policy advocates question whether the subsidy was necessary and whether an average-wage requirement says enough about what individual workers will actually earn when salaries for a few highly paid executives can skew the average.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the council’s public discussion and vote lasted about seven minutes. The public hearing opened and closed without a speaker, and council members did not discuss the lower wage requirement before approving the agreement 6-0. Novartis project director Hizbullah Khan attended Tuesday’s meeting and was acknowledged during the presentation, but council members did not question him.
The town’s new agreement combines two Novartis projects: Project Titan, announced in November 2025, and Project Maple Oak, announced in April. Both are being developed at the Pathway Triangle life-sciences campus at 1000 Science Drive. Under the original Titan agreement, Morrisville’s incentive was estimated at $2.31 million, tied to $231 million in investment, 100 jobs and an average wage of $121,080. Adding Maple Oak nearly doubles the town incentive to $4.51 million and raises the commitments to 180 jobs and $451 million in investment, while lowering the required average wage to $116,000.
The threshold for beginning incentive payments also fell, from $231 million in assessed value under the original agreement to $200 million under the combined deal.
Morrisville Economic Development Director Tiffany McNeill confirmed to The News & Observer that Titan’s original wage requirement no longer separately applies; the combined average-wage requirement now covers all 180 positions.
Novartis job postings offer an early glimpse of the workforce it is assembling in Morrisville. Openings include scientists testing pharmaceutical raw materials and finished products, managers overseeing drug-substance manufacturing and regulatory compliance, and specialists supporting production of oral solid-dose medicines. The postings illustrate the wide spread that can sit behind an average-wage requirement: some specialist base-salary ranges begin below $116,000 while senior roles extend above $250,000. The openings are not necessarily representative of all 180 promised jobs.
“An arithmetic average means nothing to a frontline plant worker,” Terrence Dewberry, president of the Triangle Labor Council, told The N&O. He criticized the subsidy, pointing to Novartis’ more than $54 billion in global net sales last year and arguing that the Triangle’s workforce and universities already make the region attractive to pharmaceutical companies.
Dewberry said he would prefer that incentives require minimum wage floors and disclosure of median wages and pay bands rather than relying on an average. He also called for protections for workers seeking to organize.
The Morrisville expansion is part of a much larger North Carolina bet by Novartis, a Basel-based global pharmaceutical company already manufacturing gene therapies in Durham. In November, the company announced a manufacturing hub spanning Durham and Morrisville, initially involving $771 million and 700 new jobs across Durham and Wake counties. In April, it added another $220 million for a second Morrisville plant that will manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients for tablets, capsules and RNA therapeutics.
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In Morrisville, one facility will make and package tablets and capsules, while another will manufacture the active ingredients used in solid-dose medicines and RNA therapeutics.
Separate state and Wake County incentives also support portions of Novartis’ broader North Carolina expansion. The state approved a Job Development Investment Grant of up to $7.5 million over 12 years for the original Durham-Wake expansion. Wake County approved an estimated $2.3 million grant over eight years for the original Morrisville project.
Novartis previously withdrew from a North Carolina incentive agreement after saying it did not expect to meet a 200-job hiring commitment at its Durham gene-therapy operation. In April 2025, the company asked the state to terminate a 2019 grant tied to 200 jobs and later repaid $61,500 it had received before becoming eligible for benefits under its newer state grant.
Alexandra Forter Sirota, executive director of the NC Budget & Tax Center, questioned whether the subsidy was necessary at all, saying incentives often support investments that would have happened anyway.
Mayor TJ Cawley defended the agreement: “I am comfortable with these adjustments.” He said the lower wage requirement remains well above Wake County’s average wage and the revised $200 million assessed-value threshold was aligned with Wake County’s incentive agreements. He said the project would generate substantially more tax revenue for Morrisville than the town returns to Novartis.
McNeill said the town expects roughly $1.58 million in property-tax revenue annually. Wake County said the project’s $451 million investment will not necessarily translate into an equivalent taxable value. Wake County will later determine the taxable value of the buildings, equipment and other business property, and equipment loses taxable value as it depreciates.
“Within the world of economic development incentives, this is a far better deal than most,” Jeffrey Dorfman, an N.C. State economist who studies economic development and local government finance, told The N&O. He said his preference is generally for no tax breaks, but he said the project’s high-paying jobs and relatively low service demands make the deal comparatively favorable.
The town’s estimated incentive amounts to about $25,000 for each of the 180 promised job, somewhat above Dorfman’s rough $20,000-per-job rule of thumb. He said there is no way to know whether an incentive was necessary and that companies are often already planning to locate somewhere when they seek incentives.
Novartis declined to say whether it sought the changes to the incentive requirements or whether Morrisville’s incentive affected its decision to build the facilities at the same location, scale and timetable.
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