By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

Sanford and Lee County may be poised to land another major economic development project that could bring as many as 335 new fulltime jobs and a tax base investment of more than $600 million to the county over a seven-year period.

The Lee County Board of Commissioners approved a performance based cash incentives grant on Monday that will consist of annual payments based on a net new taxable value for the unnamed company’s new facility that would be built in Lee County. The amount of each year’s grant will be 70 percent of the property taxes paid by the company during the previous year.

The average annual wage projected to be paid by the company is $71,132, an amount that is about 15 percent higher than the county’s current average wage of $59,900.

Sanford Area Growth Alliance CEO Jimmy Randolph told the commissioners this project has been in the works since last year, and many of Lee County’s strengths that have helped convince other major companies to choose the Sanford area as the site for their next expansion were also in play here.

Among these, Randolph said, are “our proven, highly experienced talent pool in advanced manufacturing, CCCC’s customized and highly responsive training programs including biowork and the Moore Center’s BioSolutions Center, our proximity to the world class Tier One research universities in the heart of the Triangle, a strategic location, and ready sites that create a competitive cost of doing business.”

The resolution passed by the commissioners doesn’t include the name of the company or say much about the nature of its business. But it does provide a bare-bones outline for what is known for the moment as Project Sol, described in the document as a healthcare company that will engage in manufacturing, distribution, and research and development activities.

The company is believed to be considering locating in the 900-acre Helix Innovation Park in northern Lee County where Japanese pharmaceutical maker Kyowa Kirin broke ground in the fall of 2024 on a facility that will manufacture innovative biologic therapies.

Randolph told the commissioners he believes Sanford has a very good chance of being selected by this company, but competition for biotech companies is very competitive across the rest of North Carolina and in other states. The company is believed to be considering a location in Minnesota, and that has been enough to keep those in Lee County’s economic development orbit pushing toward the finish line as the process plays out.

Monday’s passage of the tax incentive package opens the door for the start of negotiations that will finalize the remaining details of Lee County’s offer to the company. These are expected to spell out in further detail the process by which the firm will pay its annual property tax during each of the seven years of the agreement and how 70 percent of those payments would be rebated back to them by the county.

Lee County anticipates the total amount of cash incentives over the life of the seven-year project will be $12,915,175, provided the company meets all the investment, wage, and job creation milestones. That amount could fluctuate with the company’s investments in any given year, depending on the industry’s net new taxable investment and the amount of taxes paid by the company. The county will fund these payments through its general fund.

The move comes two years after the last major announcement of Kyowa Kirin in 2024. Randolph said the amount of the proposed new capital investment of this plan would exceed that of any other single project that SAGA has recruited before, should the company choose the Sanford area as the home for its expansion.