Apple in NC: Five things we learned from 1,000 pages of state records

The state’s two top economic development organizations — the Commerce Department and the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina — have released more than 1,000 pages of records related to their recruitment of Apple to Research Triangle Park.

The successful recruitment, which Apple says will lead to 3,000 new jobs in RTP, led to the state awarding the company its largest-ever incentive package, worth nearly $1 billion.

News & Observer reporters have been digging through the trove of documents since they were released. Here are five key takeaways:

1. Incentive package grew between 2018 and 2021

In early 2018, after being approached by a representative from Apple, the state began crafting what an incentive package to land the company.

The initial pitch from Apple included 5,000 jobs, a $500 million campus in Wake County and $1.5 billion in capital spending at Apple’s existing data center in Catawba County. The average wage for those jobs would have been $120,339, according to a memo from state Commerce Secretary Anthony Copeland in April 2018. In some of the earliest conversation with Apple, the records show, many of the jobs could have been customer service roles.

In exchange, North Carolina was prepared to give the company an incentive package worth $726 million .

By April of this year, the deal had changed. In the end, North Carolina offered the company a jobs grant worth $845.8 million over 39 years. For that, Apple agreed to invest $1 billion in North Carolina over 10 years, including $552 million to establish a campus in RTP where it will create at least 3,000 jobs. The company says it will spend another $448 million expanding its data center in Catawba County but not create new jobs there.

The average wage climbed to $187,000, as the jobs became more focused on research and development.

2. Apple had its eyes on RTP before 2018

The earliest contact between Apple representatives and members of the state’s recruitment force is dated to Jan. 10, 2018, according to the documents released.

That was when Bruce Thompson, a Raleigh lawyer for the firm Parker Poe, reached out to EDPNC about the potential project, which came to be called Project Bear.

Thompson at that time said Apple had already been doing site reviews in the Triangle.

3. State learned of Apple’s decision to expand in Austin from news

Throughout emails shared during the recruitment of Apple, North Carolina officials seemed to expect an announcement during the summer of 2018. In its memos, Apple even initially gave a deadline of June 1, 2018, to announce its new campus.

By that June, Christopher Chung, CEO of EDPNC, emailed the Commerce Department asking to be looped in as the state “hopefully inch(ed) closer to an announcement by Project Bear.”

No announcement came that summer. In December, state officials learned Apple was announcing a new $1 billion campus expansion in Austin from news alerts.

In the early morning hours of Dec. 13, 2018, Commerce officials sent several emails from Reuters and The Wall Street Journal about the Austin expansion. One official, in an email, simply said: “Not RTP?”

4. State never gave up

Even after the Austin expansion news, the state’s Commerce Department continued to pursue the project.

“We are not aware that the business has made a final decision regarding a potential expansion in North Carolina,” spokesman David Rhodes wrote in an email in June 2019. “The project remains active.”

The records request shows that back-and-forth emails with Apple officials had slowed to a trickle after April, when the company initially submitted a Job Development Investment Grant application to the state. And then, they stopped that summer and after the December 2018 expansion in Austin.

5. Negotiations heated up again in spring 2021

After what appeared to be a period of silence, North Carolina economic development officials again began actively working on an incentive package for Apple at the beginning of April this year.

For the next two weeks, over email and in meetings, state officials and Apple hammered out the details of an entirely new incentive package for a project that had morphed from the one initially proposed in 2018.

By April 26, a new incentive package was confirmed and the state announced that it had landed 3,000 jobs from Apple.

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate