All right. Good morning, everybody. We're going to go ahead and call the order. Appreciate everyone coming to a special meeting. So I'm going to be cognizant of everyone's time to have a forum. Good morning. Welcome to this meeting of the Economic Development Partnership Board. It's Tuesday, November 25th, 2025. We've established a quorum, so I call this meeting to order at 10.02 a.m.
Now, begin the meetings from last week. Do I need to do the meetings from last week? Yes. Okay.
It's not on here. Okay. Yeah. So our first item is considering approval of the meeting minutes for October 8th, 2025. Can I get a motion?
I got a motion from Lee Ramsey. Can I get a second? A second for maybe even set. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. Motion passes. Thank you.
Now we can go to, oh, I'm sorry. We have public comments. Now begin presentations from members of the public if we have any. Do we have any members of the public comment?
All right. Hearing none. That's where that was. All right.
Item B, EDP 25-031, Receive a report, hold a discussion, and consider recommending approval to City Council regarding an incentive agreement for Novartis Gene Therapies, Inc. for an abatement of real property taxes over 10 years up to $2,337,960 under Chapter 312 of the Texas Tax Code
and a sales tax rebate on construction materials up to $199,688, a job-based grant up to $300,000, and a remediation grant up to $381,842 under Chapter 380 of the Local Government Code.
The Chair recognizes Brittany Santello to present. Good morning Board of Directors. Thank you so much for attending this special call meeting, especially during the week of Thanksgiving. We really appreciate it.
I'm excited to present an Incentive Application Overview from Novartis Gene Therapies. If you haven't heard of Novartis, they're one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and a proposed investment in them would be one of the top capital investment projects within the past decade in the city.
So we're very excited about it. I'm going to introduce a few of the company representatives joining us virtually today. I'll start with Jennifer Dorothy. She's a strategic program lead with Novartis Oncology over their RLT investments, and we've been primarily working with her as a contact with the company.
And then Michael Camden, he's the Director of Site Selection and Business Incentives with Ryan Tax Firm. Michael Falarone, he's the Principal of the Site Selection and Business Incentives Division with Ryan Tax Firm, and also joining us today in person is Kelly Cloud. She's a VP of Life Sciences with the Dallas Female Chamber.
As you recall earlier this year, while Matilda's getting the presentation set up virtually, we started exploring life sciences as a potential recruitment industry for the city. Little did we know at the same time that Novartis was also seeking a site for their next Radiolivand Therapy Manufacturing Facility.
So I'm going to start the presentation with a quote. The convergence of life science and tech is happening now in DFW, making us a hub for research and destination for companies looking to launch or grow their life science business.
This is a quote from the Dallas Female Chamber. They are actively working on making DFW a hub for life science. This is a big opportunity for D. A little background on the company. On August 21st, Novartis and Ryan Tax Firm met with our staff to discuss their expansion and also incentives.
Novartis is a Swiss medicines corporation formed in 1996, focused on alleviating society's greatest disease burdens. They're the eighth largest pharmaceutical company in the world by revenue. They have nearly 70 offices in the United States for pharmaceuticals, operations, corporate, and biomedical research.
Can you speak up for the virtual? I feel like I'm yelling. Oh, it's not that you're not allowed, it's just the connection. Is it the mic? It's saying it's dropping. Okay, well. Yeah, I don't hear anything you like. I'm going to yell then, alright.
Novartis is seeking a site for their radio ligand therapy manufacturing facility in the US, and they're currently exploring the purchase of 2101 Shady Oaks in Denton.
This will continue the production of their RLT pharmaceuticals and they plan to manufacture Fluvicto, which is used to treat metastatic prostate cancer and Lutathera, which is used to treat GEPmess, which stands for gastro, interop, pancreatic, neuro, endocrine tumors. So that will be the end of my medical summary. I'm going to pass this to Jennifer Duarte to explain their manufacturing processes.
Thank you, Brittany. Nice to meet everybody. My name is Jennifer Duarte.
But something very unique about our medicine and something about radio ligand therapy as a whole, it is breakthrough in cancer care. Many of us may be familiar with chemotherapy, radiation, but radio ligand therapy works very differently in the sense that it's a targeted medicine.
So what we do here is we basically combine a targeted molecule with a radioactive isotope and that molecule is able to go directly to the cancer cells and it saves all of the healthy cells that you don't necessarily see with chemotherapy or radiation.
And something particularly very different with this medicine is that it's made to order for every single patient.
So because of that, it does have a very short shelf life compared to any other radiopharmaceutical out there. So our therapies that you see to the left, Plovicto, has a shelf life of only 120 hours and Lutathera to your right only has a shelf life of 72 hours.
So within three days. So when we manufacture these drugs, we do them on the very strict and safe and quality standards in order to make sure that our patients can get their dose.
So they are scheduled ahead of time to receive these doses and everything has to go well in our manufacturing processes.
And the reason why we are specifically even looking at Texas is to serve the patients in that Texas and South Central U.S. region.
So we'd like to now push our product, be able to drive it to our patients directly and ensure the reliability of the cancer care, as opposed to putting these drugs on charter flights, as you can imagine, the lower the reliability that we get with that aspect.
So our goal really is to extend and keep growing on this medicine. It is breakthrough cancer care and not only and be able to serve our prostate cancer and our endocrine cancer patients, but be able to then now build this portfolio to every single type of cancer out there, essentially.
I think that may cover most of at least of our process and what we do at least high level.
Thank you, Jennifer.
Thank you.
Continue presentation overview.
Okay, so the company is seeking 2101 Shady Oaks to purchase. It was formerly operated by U.S. Radio former Pseudocles, which is now defunct.
The site has been non-operational since 2009 and the facility they're seeking to purchase is 50,000 square feet on a 20 acre site.
It's currently owned by Kensington Tidal and there's a variety of environmental site challenges and so I'll go over that at the end of the presentation.
The company plans to improve the site in various phases and three different phases. The first one would be to remove hazardous materials and complete environmental clearance, so the site still needs to be remediated.
They'll grade the site and demolish interiors of existing buildings and begin landscaping and aesthetic enhancements.
In phase two, they plan to build out an office warehouse and renovate building number one for modern use. Building number two will be an office production lab.
They'll upgrade for specialized manufacturing operations and then the tunnel, there's a concrete chamber underneath one of the buildings and so they will improve that tunnel and transfer building and baronet bunkers.
And so it will retrofit for secure containment and shielding. For phase three, they will construct new buildings. They'll add new constructors to support future operations and upgrade utilities and infrastructure for long term sustainability.
I'm sorry, they won't construct a new building, they're just going to add improvements.
The total investment for the project is $280 million in total capital investment, $71 million in improvements, $200 million in business personal property, and $150 million to $175 million in new jobs.
Within those jobs, they have 40 various roles. That includes a site head of GM isotopes, automation calibration process engineers, production facility and maintenance technicians, quality control analysts, training leads, and various supervisor or commander positions.
So the average salary of those 40 positions is $124,000 a year. Compared to the Denton County average annual salary is $63,500, so their average salary is around $60,000 more than the Denton County annual salary.
Our proposed incentives for the project is a chapter 312 real property tax abatement at 50% for 10 years for new improvements, up to $2.3 million, a sales tax rebate at 50% on construction materials, up to $199,000 or $200,000, a job-based grant with a cap of $300,000, and a remediation grant for $381,842.
So in total incentives is up to $3.2 million. We're still actively working on negotiating the incentive agreement right now, and so many of those performance measures will be presented if this moves forward to city council.
The company has also applied for state incentives through the Texas Enterprise Fund. That fund is a deal-closing grant for companies considering a new project for which one Texas site is competing with the other out-of-state sites.
I will state that this project is still competitive. The company has – they're still negotiating with the landowners on terms of the sale. If this does not work, they have backup sites in the DFW Metroplex. They also have backup sites in Atlanta and Indianapolis, so it's still a very much competitive project.
They've also planned to apply for a state tax exemption on pharmaceutical equipment. So the state of Texas has an exemption on pharmaceutical equipment, which is great for the company, and they expect to take advantage of that.
They expect 85% exemption on their BPP over 10 years, which we estimate is about $5.9 million.
The impact of the project for the city has a net benefit less than cent as of $4.9 million. For the county, it's $1.9 million. For the school district, it is $5.2 million, and for the transit authority, it's $449,000.
So total payback period is 3.3 years, which is pretty great, and this includes the exemption on business personal property.
So going back to the site challenges, we have been working with the company, their legal counsel, Ryan Taxfer in the Dowsingham Chamber, our legal counsel, and city management to work through several challenges to help the company move forward with the sale of the site.
And number one, the site has environmental remediation challenges. So back in 2018, the current owners remediated the site 40 to 60%.
So the total cost to remediate the remaining materials is $4 million.
There's also pending litigation between the Department of State Health Services and Kensington Title, the current owners of the site, over a radioactive materials fine.
So that's, again, we're working through those details to help them get through the case. There's also outstanding tax liens. There's total deliberate taxes on the site of $1.83 million, and that includes all three taxing entities for the ISD, the city, and the county for both real property and business personal property.
So community impacts, the most important slide that we have. Number one, this project will diversify our current industries here. The company has already stated that they plan to contract with local vendors as much as possible.
They also expect that many of their suppliers will follow them. This is going to be a catalyst project to really get Ditten in a place where we are at Life Science Hub.
This also supports higher education institutions. So it provides a chance for research partnerships and employment opportunities with UNT, TWA, and NCTC students.
So UNT, I know, has a really great biomedical engineering degree program. I just judged a Shark Tank competition with them a few weeks ago, and those students, two of the pitch competition attendees were biomedical engineering degree students, so I know that they will be excited about this project.
And also TWA has a really great life science project. And most importantly, this adds a defined property back to the tax rolls. The city has not collected taxes on this site for the past 17 years, and so we will be able to add it back to the tax rolls.
On our economic development evaluation matrix score, that's an evaluation that we do for all of our incentive projects, it scored 91, which is an excellent range. And this project also meets several measures in our strategic plan, which includes expanding the tax base, increasing high-wage jobs, encouraging knowledge-based jobs, pays a living wage for employees, and many more that I won't break through.
And at this time, actually, I want to call Kelly Cloud up here to talk about how this project will make an impact, not only for Denton, but for the region and Texas.
Thanks, Kelly. Oh, thank you. Thank y'all for allowing me to be here today. I'm really excited about this project. As Brittany noted, this is a catalyst project, not only for the city of Denton, for the region, for the state, really, truly feel that way.
I work for the Dallas Regional Chamber, I'm Vice President of Economic Development for Life Sciences. So when companies like Novartis come to the region and they're looking at the region as a whole, we help kind of guide them through that process, and then we connect with our wonderful partners at the Denton Chamber of Commerce, Denton Economic Development, and they help us really understand, and our companies understand, the local Denton climate, and we really love working with them through that process.
So the reason why I'm around, I am the first industry-specific person for economic development at the Dallas Regional Chamber, and they chose Life Sciences. So I bring that up because it is very much not only a regional focus point, it is also a state focus point in their strategic plan.
A few reasons why. One, I'll go over pretty much three quick reasons why, and a few examples of actual impact that has occurred already within our state and our region. Economic impact, to retain talent, and the community impact, as they talked about those life-saving cures in our communities.
So, I'll give you an example, if you guys are going to see, for Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, that is a grant arm in the state of Texas. As a region, we have received $799 million in that grant for Cancer Prevention Research and Institute within this region.
There's been an additional follow-on economic impact funding, $2.98 billion onto those funds. Additionally, over 7,600 permanent jobs have been created, $2.15 billion in annual state and local taxes, and most importantly to me, 6,400 participants in 87 clinical trials for potentially life-saving drugs.
So, that is an example of secret as an investment. I see this as an investment. There's a few examples in our region that I'd like to highlight Alcon down the road. Over 2,500 employees was born here. This is very much an ecosystem. It has an impact from construction jobs, highly technical construction jobs, to the people, as you see, working at the facility themselves.
Another example is that Alcon has had over 10 different companies spin out and create their own companies from the talent of Alcon. So, that also creates entrepreneurs, creates new life-saving drugs, new businesses.
So, one of those is Panthera Biosolutions. They're now a training partner across the region for bioengineering technicians. That's an example of how these industries partner with our university and institutions. Additionally, another example of an entrepreneur in our region was with ZS9.
Their drug, Loquelma, was purchased by AstraZeneca. They recently announced an expansion of $455 million that they just completed, and that ribbon cutting was last month. I bring that up because that is a founder that was here that has grown and was acquired for multi-billion dollars and has continued to grow.
So, this is an investment in potential long-term growth for high-paying jobs. That's why we're here. It's quality of life, high-paying jobs where people can enter an industry, find career growth, and have an impact.
And the other thing I wanted to highlight was retaining that talent. So, 72% of our regional graduates stay in the region. I think a large percentage, or at least a notable percentage of that, that leaves are our life science graduates.
I know this by number, also by conversation personally. People telling me, "Look, we don't want to leave. We have these degrees." That is UNT. That is Texas Women's University. Both Carnegie-designated research institutions who are investing in this space.
Their students are in this space, and then we want the opportunity to be able to retain that talent rather than continuing to lose them to the coasts. This is an opportunity to do so.
Also, there was a great convergence quote at the beginning. Thank you, Brittany. I really will note about that. There's translational skills involved here. This is a nuclear medicine which allows for our transition into a high-energy space that is growing.
We have advanced manufacturing, also supply chain and logistics. That's going to have an impact with UNT's supply chain and logistics program. They have a Pharma.Aero supply chain master class that went to UNT. They're connected globally with their pharma supply chain.
This also has impacts throughout the industry in different forms. Not just this project. It's industry-leading. There will be those following on. It's a personalized medicine close to us to help our patients, help those in our backyard, our community.
If there's anything I can do to help answer questions about why we're focusing on this and why this project is groundbreaking and a catalyst for the whole region and state, please let me know. I'm very passionate about this, as you can see. I've seen the impact personally. If there's any way I can help, I'd be happy to be a support for the City of Denton.
We have really great partners in this and we're excited. Alright, going back to our staff recommendation. I can read this over or we can proceed with questions.
Let's open it up for questions. Okay. The predecessor to this group, because of the nature of the half-life of the medicine, anticipated a lot of aviation involvement in being able to whipper. Have they given you any idea of how big the area is this medicine would be distributed to?
We're at the site of Texas, and I'll let Jennifer answer that question. Jennifer, could you hear?
I think I have part of it. I just heard how far. How far is our reach? Is there anything else to also capture?
Well, the question is, I understand your economic development of your facility, but I anticipate one of the ancillary benefits would be aviation related because you have to deliver that medicine, in some cases, long distances, and you can't do it by ground, in some cases.
But my question is, what's your experience factor in the aviation impact? Yes, so this is actually currently we are fully charter and flights. So that's how we currently deliver our medicine because of the short shelf life of the medicine and to increase our reliability.
The goal is to then be ground. So within a 15 hour radius of where the location would be in all the clinics that in hospitals that we were served within that 15 hour radius of the location, there'd be some aspects that would still be flown. Of course, but the percentage would be very low.
Now, there will be a 15 hour range. Yeah, that's a great question. Ground. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. There's potential there based on their total capacity though still and their ability to build other facilities. So I would say it's a net positive.
Supply chain experience.
Any other questions.
Do we have a sense for whether this incentive package is competitive with any other state that may be in the running? Are we doing what we can to be as competitive as possible?
We are, and Clay Parker, he's been working hard on an incentive proposal too. We do believe it's competitive. Our site selectors, we've been working with them with Jennifer and Michael Camden and Michael Falaroni.
Both Michaels have worked through a work throughout the United States on incentive agreements. And so they're very vocal in telling us if it's competitive or not. So I think we are.
I don't know if Michael Camden, Michael Falaroni, if you want to comment on that or Jennifer.
Yeah, yeah, sure. I can comment and thank you all for your consideration today. This is Michael Falaroni. I'm a partner in Ryan. And I, you know, like Brittany said, I have had the opportunity to work in over 40 states. So when it comes to this offer, compared to, you know, other offers that we're pursuing, very competitive.
Obviously, the site has some challenges and, but, you know, what those challenges the city is, you know, really stepped up and offer, you know, potential solutions to those challenges. And so we do feel like this is a very competitive offer that's evolved over the last, oh, Brittany, we met in August, I think. Is that right?
Yes. August. Yeah. So evolved over the last three or four months and Brittany and Kelly and just the collective group have been phenomenal to work with. So, you know, we're hoping that there's still a lot of groundwork to do and the approval of this incentive is really important.
The offer from the state is really important and some of the, you know, things that we still need to work through from a due diligence perspective on this and some other sites. But we do think this is very competitive and really thank you for considering it again.
Thank you, Michael.
Next, just two questions. To clarify the environmental remediation grant of 382. That's to offset. Is it 4 million estimated costs for the environmental pieces that is that so 10% basically for that line item.
It's to assist.
Yes, that's pretty minimal really I mean is what we're getting there. And then are there to piggyback off of that are there state or city potential grants that we could be looking at to help increase that number in terms of support towards the environmental remediation
for Jeremy that it's pretty low number and if not, how's how's that factoring in for the company in terms of consideration. Sure, so we're looking at other avenues right now.
So I know through the Texas enterprise prime we hope that they do land that grant, and if they do it'd be the first for didn't I don't believe that and Amy you probably know better than me if didn't has ever had a product qualify for the TVF.
This would be the first hopefully, and then how we got the numbers for the remediation grant is based off the business personal property tax lien that currently do on the property, because that that property is not really worth anything it's partly radioactive waste.
That's how we got that number.
And then the taxes the 1.8 million that there is that going to be collected when this transaction if this transaction gets through does that all get paid or is that being negotiated as well.
Yeah, so this is a, all of the incentives that are being offered are performance based we can say for the city like for the city's peace to receive any of that remediation grant the property has to be purchased property has to be remediated and the back, back taxes have to be collected for the state portion.
So we're working with the city's delinquent tax attorney psycho psycho to work with those other entities to see how it can be structured for them but at least for the city's piece that will be paid, it will be paid.
It's a requirement of that to receive something that would happen probably any transaction that went through it's just a matter of giving them issues of the property finding a transaction that we go through.
So that's one piece of why we do think it's really important because the site is a real challenge for the community so this really takes care of a couple things that were mediated environmental hazard code gets the property back on the tax rolls, and then creates high paying wages.
Are you pursuing a county tax statement as well as partnership.
And provide incentives.
One more question if that's okay. I actually toured the site in like 2012 or 2013, another pharmaceutical company that was interested in making an investment here.
So I'm aware of some specific underground infrastructure that I will speak to openly, but is that being remediated or recommissioned decommissioned what's happening with that.
That's a great question for Jennifer.
And that's why they like the site number one is they like the concrete chamber because they do plan to retrofit it but I will let Jennifer talk about the plans.
And I don't know how much of that we want to talk about.
During the closed session.
Yeah, that can go into to further deals, but to keep it high level the, it is a boron infused so it is an attractive feature because it does help our health and safety aspects of our production and our waste handling.
And now everything will be retrofitted and updated the company's needs at a later phase.
Lots and I will say to this company is pioneering and what we are doing. So we are the first in the market to have FDA approved radio pharmaceuticals.
So similarly, there are more innovations that hopefully are coming through our pipeline with some time as well. So we're just preparing for the future currently.
Thank you, Jennifer.
Okay, good questions.
My question is about the connectivity with
people being prepared to, you know, enter into this space to work there.
Of course we have the universities here.
They're high level, you know, environmental biology, chemistry, people here.
Based on the timeline, all of this goes through.
Are we going to be looking for talent that is pretty much situated here and coming out of those universities, are you going to, you know, kind of reassure us that your talent is going to pretty much stay in this area, or is that talent going to be, you know, more widespread than that.
I mean, how, how connected will this be to the, to the, to the educational spaces that we have here already?
What are you all thinking in those terms?
Jennifer, I think, I think it might be good for you to talk about maybe at some of your other facilities, like, how, how you formed university partnerships locally to help drive a talent pipeline.
I know you've done that in a number of other sites. Maybe if you could talk high level about that. Absolutely. No, yeah. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. So we do have currently three other manufacturing sites across the country.
We have one in Millburn, New Jersey, which is where I'm stationed out of. We have another one in Indianapolis, Indiana, and another one in Carlsbad, California that was actually just announced about a few weeks ago.
So, just starting, for example, with our Indiana facility, we do have a partnership with Purdue, where we created an entire master's program for radiopharmaceuticals, as well as some other certification programs that allow the employees to get
any gap that they may have for radiopharmaceuticals or just to get them equipped with the right skills. So we are working with those communities to funnel in talent from that aspect.
As far as the Texas region goes, I mean, Kelly, me and her have been working around as well and what those partnerships look like. How do we ensure the talent stays local and for perspective to our, the roles that we would be looking for, our manufacturing roles.
They would need to be local. They wouldn't be stationed globally, so they would be there.
Our goal would then just be to instill and perfect the talent with through the programs that we, that we can then roll out throughout the community.
And my other question, thank you for allowing me to speak one more time. And it's just not even really a question. It's just a comment. I am the representative for this area. It is called district one and I'm the representative for that area.
And we still have a lot of infilling to go on in that area. And I just want to just publicly say that I'm very excited about maybe this opportunity coming to that area.
Our city is kind of growing, bulging out and just having an opportunity to infill this space is just very, it's, I'm excited about it. I'll play it that way. I'm hoping that something can come of this because we know that even in this area, it's an older, considered an older part of town.
It's really the core and just to have this to come through there and start building up that business center centric area there. That'll be very helpful. So, you know, just kind of wishing you a lot of luck on that.
Thank you.
Okay. One quick comment. I just want to thank you guys. This site has been a site that we've worked through multiple times at Denton. And we would love to have you guys here. Thank you for taking on the challenge of a challenging site.
And we understand the challenges for that. So whatever support we can do for you guys to make this project work here, we'd love to. And thank you for choosing Denton.
I'll make a comment too as the, you know, we talked about for economic development in this region for a long time, getting another big, big employer, right, that can help with the tax base.
This is an opportunity to do that for Denton. So I'm speaking for my employer that this is a good, this is good for the community here.
Be ready for a motion. Yes. I'm ready. So I move that this warden recommends approval to city council regarding the Senate agreement.
I got a motion from Rick Wolfman. Can I get a second.
I said a second from Vicki bird.
With that, can I get all in favor.
Any opposed. All right. With that motion passes.
Thank you all so much for your support.
Thank you.
Thank you all so much.
All right.
Yeah, we're close to the end. So staff and everybody. Thank you for this hard work and happy Thanksgiving.
So does the board have any other business or just to discuss or suggestions for the next meeting.
My apologies for being late for some reason had a 10 30. Luckily, I had heard a lot of this beforehand, so I felt comfortable participating in the vote, but my apologies to everyone.
Okay.
Our next ADP meeting is scheduled to be on Wednesday, December 10 2025 at 11am. Please let staff know you're unable to attend and submit your notification of absence online.
There are no other business. I will turn this meeting at 1039. Thank you.