This story was written for WRAL TechWire Innovator partner the Town of Holly Springs.

People in the Triangle area may still be sleeping on Holly Springs, but Holly Springs hasn’t waited for people to wake up and smell the coffee — or in this case, the economic possibility.

Seqirus, RoviSys, UNC Rex Healthcare — collectively, these big name companies employ thousands of people and each have operation based in Holly Springs, a town just southwest of Raleigh that has seen an explosive population growth of almost 200 percent in just 15 years.

It could be the idyllic nature of the town, the many parks and outdoor areas, or the overall quality of life, but a lot of the growth can be attributed to Holly Springs’ Economic Development as well.

In the early 2000s, Holly Springs realized it was in a unique position to attract life science companies. Drawing from the biotechnology growth in the region, it hired a consulting firm to perform a branding study. The results of the study confirmed the town’s assumptions that Holly Springs was a great place for life science companies to break ground, and it went to work on developing a marketing strategy to attract employers.

“I think some people laughed at the time,” said Daniel Weeks, assistant town manager of Holly Springs. “Some people assumed we were overly ambitious and said, ‘Holly Springs is never going to be successful in that endeavor.'”

But then Holly Springs landed Novartis (now Seqirus) and proved the doubters wrong.

In 2006, after a multi-year international search process, the pharmaceutical company selected Holly Springs as the base for the nation’s first flu cell culture manufacturing facility. The more than 500,000-square-foot facility opened in 2009, sits on 167 acres of land, and has the capacity to produce 50 million doses of the trivalent flu vaccine.

Seqirus Employee

In 2006, after a multi-year international search process, Novartis selected Holly Springs as the base for the nation’s first flu cell culture manufacturing facility. (Photo Courtesy of Seqirus)

As of last year, Seqirus employs approximately 550 full-time employees and roughly 200 contract workers.

“I think [this] allowed Holly Springs a legitimate seat at the table in the world of biotechnology,” Weeks said. “People realized Holly Springs is for real now.”

And real it has been, especially when you consider the effects Novartis has had on the town as a whole. Not only did it give Holly Springs credit as a true player in the biotech game, it charted a path for other companies to make a homebase in the town and had an economic impact on existing businesses as well.

“Novartis, when they located here, it provided a huge shot in the arm to our local economy,” Weeks said. “Whenever you invest hundreds of millions of dollars in an area and produce hundreds of jobs, obviously those people need somewhere to live, they need daycare for their children and places to shop. Local service providers also felt the impact.”

For example, Ideal Landscaping, which is based in Holly Springs, provides all of the landscaping services for Novartis/Seqirus. Novartis is a also a client of RoviSys, a company that provides automation and information solutions for life science enterprises, which is also based in Holly Springs.

Weeks said that it’s nice to be able to “keep that money in the local economy.” He alluded that other economic development projects came, even if indirectly, from the success of Novartis.

The achievements of Holly Springs through Novartis were featured in the Wake County Economic Development’s 2016 Anatomy of a Project program. Every year, Wake County gives the community an inside, behind-the-curtain look at business recruitment through this program.

“Business recruitment has a lot of stereotypes associated with it,” explained Ashley Cagle, assistant executive director of economic development with the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. “It’s been a really great series to help educate people about how transformative it can be for a community. Novartis was certainly transformative for Holly Springs.”

Cagle said Holly Springs has never been afraid to be forward thinking and that mindset has “continued to pay off for them.”

“When it came to Novartis, they were able to execute. They were able to make promises to the company, which they were also able to keep,” Cagle continued. “There weren’t always times in that project when they were sure it was going to go their way and things were challenging. They were able to sort of rally quickly, adjust, reexamine and get back on track. That’s ultimately what won them the project, and it’s paid off for them as Novartis, now Seqirus, has expanded multiple times.”

Seqirus’s parent company, CSL, acquired Novartis in 2015, and announced plans to add a $140 million expansion and 120 jobs to the Holly Springs site. It occupies a large area of the Holly Springs Business Park, which houses several other businesses, as well as shovel-ready sites in order to land future projects like Novartis.

Weeks said the initial estimate for Novartis’ capital investment was a couple hundred million dollars and since then, it’s increased dramatically to the point where Novartis/Seqirus landed in the top five taxpayers in all of Wake County.

“When you get a big win, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to be a Novartis or a Seqirus that pays dividends over and over again like they have,” Cagle pointed out. “[Holly Springs] knew that they had an appropriate workforce to support life science manufacturing.”

The Triangle has a prevalent education and workforce training sector that appealed to Novartis, but at the end of the day, what sealed the deal was Holly Springs’ intentional planning and preparation to attract and retain companies like Novartis.

“When you talk about Holly Springs and their ability to locate a company like Novartis, you inevitably end up talking about reputation,” Cagle said. “And what Holly Springs was able to do through [the vetting] process is  they have built a tremendous reputation in the economic development world, in the site selection world [and] with private partners.”

Weeks mentioned the town’s strong relationship with Chris McDonald, the former head of operations Novartis’ Holly Springs site.

“He allowed us to use him as a reference to other potential life science companies looking to locate [here],” he said. “He would convey his positive experience with the town’s development departments and elected officials. I think that’s the perfect testament to Novartis showing that it was the right decision to locate in Holly Springs.”

Once considered a “bedroom community” — a place where people live, but commute out of for work — Novartis opened the doors for other businesses to come to Holly Springs and has helped shape it into the thriving life science hub it is today.

Added Weeks, “I’m sure there were doubters along the way. But when we actually landed Novartis, it was one of our proudest moments.”

This story was written for WRAL TechWire Innovator partner the Town of Holly Springs.