Mike Kondratick, Mayor, Town of Holly Springs

Invest: spoke with Holly Springs Mayor Mike Kondratick about the town’s rapid population growth, its long-term focus on life sciences and advanced manufacturing, and the infrastructure and quality-of-life investments supporting its next phase. “We have been blessed across the board in terms of all of the different types of growth that we’ve seen,” Kondratick said.

What have been some of the most important developments for Holly Springs over the past year?

Holly Springs added about 2,500 new residents over the past year, and we have added about that same amount for each of the past five years. We are projected to add at least that amount for the next five years, which is about as far as the projections can reliably go. Resident growth continues at a pretty brisk pace for us.

That residential growth has been paired with success from a strategic economic development standpoint. We have been laser-focused in Holly Springs on the life sciences and advanced manufacturing industries, and we have had several wins over the last five years, including this past year. All of that growth on the residential, commercial, and industrial sides has allowed us to maintain the second-lowest tax rate of any municipality here in Wake County.

It has also allowed us to foster a large small-business ecosystem. In 2024, we had about 700 new business starts in Holly Springs. In 2025, we had about 600 new business starts. Both of those numbers put us either first or second among Wake County municipalities in terms of new business starts. We have been blessed across the board in terms of all of the different types of growth that we’ve seen. That has also allowed us to deliver additional affordability for our residents.

What are you seeing in terms of business and investment interest in life sciences and advanced manufacturing?

In life sciences, we now have a handful of major employers. The success in this area started for us in 2006, when what is now CSL Seqirus located in Holly Springs. It is now the largest vaccine manufacturer in the United States, and that was the first step in what had been a generation worth of planning and focus to attract life sciences employers.

That planning and the success we had with CSL really came to a head starting in 2021, when we were able to attract FUJIFILM Diosynth. Since that success, Amgen has put a location here, we have successfully recruited Genentech, and then last year we recruited a Swiss-based medtech firm called Ypsomed.

Ypsomed is not as large as those other major employers, but it is important for Holly Springs strategically because it is part of the life sciences supply chain. It is our first major step in the direction of not only having those major employers, but also being able to build out that supply chain here in town. That becomes the springboard to the next chapter in our life sciences story.

What investments are underway to support the future growth of those industries?

On the municipal side, the most important aspect is the investments we are making in expanding both our water and wastewater systems. We are taking the approach of building out our water system regionally, in partnership with the towns of Sanford and Fuquay-Varina. That project is already underway. It will take several years to complete. We are expanding Sanford’s water treatment plant and then building a pipeline to Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina.

We are also about to do a groundbreaking ceremony on the expansion of our existing wastewater treatment plant, which is going to increase the number of millions of gallons a day that we can process. We have also started to look at what we need to do to expand our wastewater capacity beyond what will be available once our on-site expansion is done.

Our taxpayers, including our corporate taxpayers, collectively in both our water and wastewater projects, are investing $500 million to ensure that the town can continue to grow and continue to support both industry and residential growth.

What are local small businesses experiencing right now, and how is downtown evolving as a commercial hub?

One of our biggest challenges is that our commercial vacancy rate is ridiculously low. It is under 1%, which is really an unhealthy number. As we continue to look at rezoning applications, we are keenly tuned into how much commercial space is being offered or proposed, because we know that as quickly as we can build it and make it available, that space is disappearing.

We need to make sure we have enough space to accommodate everybody who wants to be here, but also that we are building the right types of space to fit the businesses that want to locate here. We also partner with Launch Holly Springs, a small-business incubator that has been around since 2017. It now has an alumni base of 150 businesses that have started as a result of engagement with that program, and its ninth cohort is happening right now.

Downtown is where we are most focused from a placemaking standpoint. Holly Springs was not blessed with a traditional downtown, so this downtown space is literally having to be built from the ground up. We developed a downtown area development plan to add focus and resources to that effort. We are working through the priorities in that plan now, including adding more parking downtown and moving forward with what we are calling our Festival Street to support more festivals and more activity.

How is the town approaching housing and affordability?

The housing pipeline is robust. When I took office, there were roughly 5,300 approved units in our pipeline that had not yet been built. That sits on top of about 18,000 existing residential units, so residential construction here is going to continue to be consistent for most of my term.

One of our challenges is that we are over-indexed on detached single-family homes. They make up roughly 85% of Holly Springs’ housing stock. That is one of the reasons it is a priority for the council to make sure that, as we continue to approve projects beyond what is already in the pipeline, we are also offering multifamily housing and different types of units that fit with the town center concept we are developing.

Those types of housing units are also more likely to give us opportunities to offer more affordable options. The average home price in Holly Springs is about 25% higher than Wake County’s average, and the council realizes that is far too high. One of the first things we did was re-engage with an affordable housing study and begin working with Wake County on an affordable housing plan. We have tasked staff with coming back to us with the first policy steps we can take to make affordable housing more attractive for developer partners to build and to determine where those units make the most sense around town.

What are your top priorities for the next three to five years?

Traffic is the top complaint we heard during last year’s campaigns, so another major priority is the next set of investments we are going to make in roads and in continuing to expand our greenways. We are already working through a project list, and sooner rather than later, there will be another transportation bond on the ballot here in Holly Springs to help finance those improvements.

Over the next three to five years, as 2,500 new people a year continue to move here, we will continue our laser-like focus on life sciences and advanced manufacturing. Specifically, I think you are going to see us focus more on the supply chains that support the larger companies already here in Holly Springs.

We also now compete globally in life sciences and advanced manufacturing. We compete for new corporate partners with India, with China, and with major U.S. markets like Boston, San Francisco, and Austin. One advantage we have is that our four major employers control about 250 acres of land that they can use to further expand their operations, and beyond that, we have an additional 700 shovel-ready acres that we are using to help recruit additional employers.

That whole ecosystem, including our partnerships with Wake County, the NC Biotech Center, and the community college system, is something we need to continue to keep strong.