NC Fought Hard for Gilead’s New Site, Adding to Exploding Biotech Presence
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In February, Gilead announced its plans to replant some roots back east with a new business services center in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The new site will bring in 275 jobs to the North Hills innovation district HR, finance and IT positions.
At one time, the state had reaped some benefits of the pharma giant’s presence with a 150-head R&D facility in Durham. But when Gilead consolidated research to its Foster City HQ, the facility closed in 2010.
North Carolina was bound and determined to win back the business, bringing new, higher-paying jobs to the area. Recently, disclosed public records show the Tar Heel state faced stiff competition from Atlanta in the bid for the business service center.
Georgia’s capital was offering $10 million to bring Gilead’s new office to their city instead. The company was considering a 60,000-square-foot office space to lease in Buckhead’s commercial district. Atlanta had a leg up with its airport offering better connections to Gilead's California HQ and other international sites.
North Carolina’s Commerce Department put in overtime lobbying hard for the project to come to their state. The Commerce secretary at the time even tried to make allowances for Gilead’s push to allow H1-B visa holders to count toward the promised headcount for the new site, but that option was ultimately denied.
Gilead has already begun hiring, filling about half its open roles with primarily local talent and offering wages more than double the average for the area. The company is leasing out three floors of the Midtown Plaza building in North Hills previously leased by Allscripts.
Gilead will receive a nearly $10 million reimbursement incentive from the state if it meets all its milestones. The released records also show the pharma giant has been granted more than $357,000 in community college training incentives. The projected impact of the project on North Carolina’s economy is in the ballpark of $1.11 billion through new tax revenue.
The state has been attracting big names for the past few years, growing steadily as a life sciences and tech hub. In 2020, Eli Lilly announced plans to invest over $470 million to create more than 460 new jobs in Durham with a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for its diabetes drugs. This July, Lilly followed up with a purchase of a 102-acre area adjacent to its manufacturing campus for further future expansion.
Apple has also planted its seed in Research Triangle Park, marking its location as the site of its very first East Coast campus. The $1 billion project will create 3,000 new jobs in the area with an average of $185,000. The campus’ focus will be AI, machine learning and software engineering.
In March, Internet giant Google announced plans to create an engineering hub in downtown Durham, creating 1,000 jobs as part of a $7 billion plan to grow U.S. operations.
In 2020, announcements of life science company expansion in North Carolina brought in a tally of more than $2.3 billion in investment and 2,800 new jobs in biopharma manufacturing in the coming years.
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