Gov. Cooper speaks out on Centene’s move to abandon Charlotte hub

RALEIGH, N.C. — Last summer, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper stood on a stage at the Centene Corp. construction site in University City where the health-care company had committed to invest $1 billion and add at least 3,200 jobs in the years ahead.

Last week — a little more than a year after Cooper led the Centene dedication ceremony — company executives, including president and Chief Operating Officer Brent Layton, traveled to Raleigh to meet with Cooper and other state leaders at the Governor’s Mansion. The delegation from Centene’s St. Louis headquarters came bearing bad news: The Fortune 50 company, with $126 billion in revenue in 2021, had decided to forgo the East Coast hub that it had committed to in July 2020.

When the deal was announced, it stood as the Charlotte region’s largest recruiting success and included a then-record state and local government incentives package worth as much as $450 million.

The private investment has reduced by half since then — and without the ongoing economic boost of the 3,200 jobs. Instead, Centene hopes to recoup its $540 million investment in a soon-to-be-finished 800,000-square-foot building and related investments by sub-leasing or selling the office space. Also available: 130 acres of University City land acquired by Centene in 2020 for $19 million.

Centene executives told state and city leaders and, later, CBJ, that the company’s decision not to build an East Coast headquarters stemmed from the ruptures in office life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Remote and hybrid virtual-office employees account for 90% of the company’s workforce and executives expect those once-temporary adaptations to endure.

Cooper spoke with CBJ about the loss of Centene. He pointed to the company keeping its 1,700 current North Carolina employees in place as well as plans to grow to 900 employees from 700 in Charlotte as encouraging signs. And, the governor said, he tried to persuade the company to reconsider the headquarters, citing the uncertainty of how return-to-office trends will ultimately shake out.

Read more from the interview here.

(WATCH BELOW: CBJ: Centene drops plans for 3,200-job campus in University City)

CBJ: Centene drops plans for 3,200-job campus in University City

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