Clinical trials company moves HQ from Tennessee to Durham — without incentives
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- LabConnect relocates headquarters from Tennessee to Durham to access biotech hub
- Company plans hires in sales, operations, technology, data science and project management
- Move occurs without North Carolina or Durham incentives; company cites talent networks
A contract research organization with more than 700 employees has relocated its headquarters from Eastern Tennessee to a multi-tenant office building right outside Research Triangle Park, where it promises to hire over the next few years.
“With this new Raleigh office, we are exactly where our customers are making some of their most important decisions about drug development,” LabConnect CEO Wes Wheeler wrote in a statement last week announcing the new headquarters.
Founded in 2002, LabConnect supports clinical trials through lab services, consulting and data management. The company was based in Seattle until 2020, when it moved to Johnson City, Tennessee, after receiving economic incentives from the state, regional economic partners and the federal Tennessee Valley Authority. At that time, LabConnect employed around 350 people.
Six years later, a bigger LabConnect has moved to the Triangle, and neither state nor Durham officials say they offered incentives. The company wrote it will add staff to its new headquarters on Page Road in Durham “in the coming years,” with positions in sales, operations, technology, data science and project management.
North Carolina has dangled economic incentives to lure other headquarters away from other states, including in November, when the shipping and logistics company Maersk announced it would shift its U.S. headquarters from northern New Jersey to Charlotte.
LabConnect still shows active job openings in Johnson City and has other U.S. sites in Ohio and Florida in addition to Europe and Australia. It highlighted the Triangle’s robust biotech and pharmaceutical sectors as a major attraction for the headquarters change, alongside the area universities and local network of contract research organizations.
Major North Carolina CROs include IQVIA in Durham and Syneos Health in Morrisville. PPD Inc., which Thermo Fisher Scientific acquired in 2021, was headquartered in Wilmington and has an office in the Triangle.
