We’ve been hearing rumors about this Apple complex for at least 3 years now. It’s making real estate prices go bonkers. I drive by the site all the time and nothing has been done at all. No signs, no foliage cleared, no road work, no cranes. I think they’re blowing smoke up the governor’s rear.
I'd venture there's a certain political spotlight which the NC legislature consistently inserts it's self into, that could create a sticking point for some high level C-suite executive at Apple.
Yah, I'm convinced North Carolina wants to be the new Florida politically.
The news headlines out of that state can be bewildering. The Republican attempt to strip Roy Cooper of his powers as a democratically elected governor was quite an eyebrow raising moment.
It will get worse now that the NC Supreme Court has overturned its previous decision that partisan gerrymanders were illegal.
As a NC resident, I strongly expect that the current legislature will quickly draw districts to ensure their ability to maintain a super-majority in both houses of the state gov.
The funds are based on a percentage of employee withholdings (income tax) - if there are no employees, there are no funds to Apple:
"It is
a performance-based economic development incentive program that provides annual grant
disbursements for a period of up to 12 years, to new and expanding businesses based on a
percentage of withholding taxes paid by new employees during each calendar year of a grant. This
percentage ranges from 10% to 75% (80% for awards after October 1, 2015 in Tier 1 counties). "
As far as I can tell, they are just proposing that most (75%) of the income taxes the new Apple employees would have paid to the state will instead go to Apple. If they never have any employees, Apple gets 75% of zero.
<edit for additional info>It appears that the Apple incentive is "transformative" a classification that means the amount can raise from 75% to 100% if Apple meets the hiring targets . . .
Usually all of these tax breaks are dependent on actually building facilities, hiring and maintaining staff levels over a period of time. They likely haven’t gotten anything yet. Same goes for things like that Foxconn factory in the midwest (WI?) that never materialized.
Bonkers real estate prices in NC are probably more about people cashing out of higher-price areas and coming here now rather than any future Apple development. I think the Apple (and Google) moves to NC have some impact it's just that NC is attracting a lot of movers from CA, NY, and FL already. Check out:
I wouldn't judge too harshly. We're not Apple-big, but even significantly scaling back design plans, we're almost 50% over budget on a $MM facilities expansion.
That's just the reality of completing projects in a 2023 market that were drafted in 2018.
