Companies looking to relocate to Wake County can invest less and still qualify for a business investment grant \u2014 as long as they create new, high-paying jobs.<\/p>\n
The Wake County Commissioners Monday approved a change to the Business Investment Grant that lowers the minimum capital investment, but requires that new jobs include salaries double the county\u2019s average median income.<\/p>\n
The change was to accommodate MetLife, which had shown interest late last year in relocating to Cary to open a global technology and operations hub. MetLife plans to invest $85 million, falling short of the $100 million requirement for the Wake County grant.<\/p>\n
Established Wake County business can get by with a lower investment threshold if they have a taxable value of $75 million.<\/p>\n
The grant also requires that at least 50 new full-time jobs are created. Those jobs must have wages that are 120 percent of the county\u2019s average annual income. Today, Wake County\u2019s average annual wage is about $45,400.<\/p>\n
Those requirements would stay the same, but Commissioners have added an allowance for companies that are creating high-paying jobs.<\/p>\n
While MetLife plans on only investing $85 million into its new hub, it would hire 1,200 employees making average annual salaries of $112,000.<\/p>\n
Companies that would invest $50 million and create at least 250 jobs with annual salaries of 200 percent the annual salary of your average Wake County worker, or $181,200 a year, would also be eligible for the grant.<\/p>\n
County Manager David Cooke said that this grant has been used a limited number of times; NetApp and Novartis were two of the grant recipients.<\/p>\n
Other companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Fidelity insurance were also approved for grants, but were never paid because they failed to meet the requirements.<\/p>\n
Cooke said that no grant payments are made until the investment is on the ground and property taxes are paid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
County Commissioners approved changes this week to the business incentive grant to accommodate MetLife, which the company says will bring in jobs with hefty salaries. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24029,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,15],"tags":[1205],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24029"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}