The New Brunswick Development Corporation (DEVCO) engaged ESI to analyze the economic and fiscal impacts of the Health + Life Sciences Exchange (HELIX). The project is a proposed 12-story mixed-use development in downtown New Brunswick housing Rutgers University’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, a translational research facility, and the New Jersey Innovation Hub. As one of the first applicants under the NJEDA Aspire program, DEVCO needed a structured net benefit analysis demonstrating that the project would deliver a positive return on public investment by the State of New Jersey.
ESI estimated the economic and fiscal impacts of HELIX over a ten-year period using IMPLAN input-output modeling to capture direct, indirect, and induced effects within the city and state economies. The analysis addressed three distinct impact streams:
- ongoing operations of the facility, including employment and spending generated by the medical school and research center;
- growth in licensing revenues from academic research commercialization; and
- the spinoff of new businesses launched through the innovation hub.
Tax revenue impacts for the State of New Jersey were estimated, consistent with the NJEDA Aspire program’s net benefit framework that compares projected tax revenue gains against the value of the requested tax credit.
The analysis demonstrated a net positive return on public investment, providing the evidentiary basis for DEVCO’s Aspire tax credit application. In February 2023, HELIX was named the first project approved under New Jersey’s Aspire Tax Credit program. The findings also established a replicable analytical framework for evaluating the public benefits of anchor institution investments that has since been applied by ESI to perform net benefit analysis of other projects in the context of New Jersey’s economic development incentive programs.
This project was the first awardee of the new NJ Aspire tax credit program.
