Gov. John Carney

delaware.gov

By Joseph Edelen

WILMINGTON — Delaware-based biopharmaceutical company Incyte is expanding into downtown Wilmington, marking a significant step in the state’s involvement in the bioscience sector.

Incyte announced Tuesday that it purchased the Bracebridge I and Bracebridge III buildings at King and French streets in downtown Wilmington, which will be renovated by the company and bring in over 300 employees currently working at its location in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

Totaling more than 517,300 square feet, the buildings – which were originally constructed for MBNA in the 1990s and used until it merged with Bank of America in 2006 — have remained vacant since the bank’s departure in 2018. They will nearly double Incyte’s footprint in the First State and add more than 500 future jobs, officials say.

“It really is a huge step forward for us in the biosciences; particularly, as it relates to going forward, the future of our economy. That’s almost immeasurable. It is following on a lot of investments that taxpayers, through state funding, have made over those many years, and finally, we’re seeing some of the fruits of that,” Gov. John Carney told the Daily State News on Wednesday.

The governor remarked on past strides the state has made in the bioscience industry, calling Incyte’s move the “capstone” to a “great Delaware story.” The company was founded in the First State in 2002 and has maintained its global headquarters just outside of Wilmington in Alapocas.

That location – which is the former site of a Wanamaker’s department store – has been expanded to include three facilities and is the home to the company’s corporate and research and development teams. Now, vacated office space at that location will be converted into lab space.

In late 2023, Incyte abandoned its plans to expand into a location at the Wilmington Friends School following widespread community pushback. After the deal fell apart, Gov. Carney said it looked like the company might expand in Pennsylvania, so it became a top priority to keep the business in Delaware.

“As we got closer to today, it was apparent that they were really interested in Wilmington, which is double-plus for us because there’s so much vacant office space and, in particular, those buildings,” the governor said.

In addition to filling vacant office space and creating “new-to-Wilmington” jobs, Gov. Carney touted Incyte’s expansion as a benefit to the entire city, not just its downtown area.

The term-limited governor, who is running to become Wilmington’s next mayor, said the move helps all neighborhoods and “creates an amount of prestige for the city and the state in terms of all our competition.

“It’s bringing tax revenue in to enable the city to have public safety service, parks … all the things that can make the city, neighborhoods and the rest stronger,” he said. “It enables us, as a state, to make investments in housing and community development. So, it’s not just for downtown … it has a multiplier effect that’s incredible.”

During the process, Incyte worked with the Delaware Prosperity Partnership to gauge potential sites for their expansion.

Through the Delaware Strategic Fund, the prosperity partnership helped secure up to nearly $10 million for a jobs performance grant and more than $5.6 million for a lab space grant. That funding will be contingent on meeting commitments that were outlined to the fund, which reviewed and approved Incyte’s request for nearly $15 million.

While Tuesday’s announcement was significant for the Carney administration’s economic development goals, the governor said there were other projects in the works, like revitalizations to downtown Dover and the Nylon Capital Shopping Center in Seaford.

Gov. Carney also remarked on a recent trip to Ireland, where he was impressed with the country’s bioscience infrastructure and wanted to replicate their success in the First State.

“As we continue to cultivate it, it really can spread up and down the state,” Gov. Carney said. “The secret sauce in Ireland was really integrating private sector, public sector and higher education, and if we can do that with training, higher ed and private sector, we can really make this thing bake across the state.”