Denton City Council unanimously approved an economic development agreement and tax abatement with Novartis Gene Therapies at a Dec. 16 meeting.

If Novartis chooses to move forward with the project, the company will invest $280 million into a new manufacturing facility located at 2101 Shady Oaks Drive.

“This would not only be a win for the city of Denton, but for DFW and the state of Texas,” Director of Economic Development Brittany Sotelo said.

The details: Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical corporation formed in 1996, is the eighth-largest pharmaceutical company in the world by revenue, selling products in 118 countries, according to city documents.

The company is considering the purchase of an existing three-building, special-use facility totaling around 50,000 square feet on 20 acres in Denton.

The impact: This project has the potential to generate $4.8 million in revenue over 10 years for the city, Sotelo said.

The Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum reopened on Dec. 15 after being closed for roughly two years for renovations and now features a new exhibit, according to a news release from Denton County.

What's happening? The exhibit has replicas of the family homes of several United States presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, Martin Van Buren, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Adams.

The replicas on display in the courthouse are on loan from the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

“During a tour this past summer at the George W. Bush Library, I saw the replicas and immediately asked if it were possible to have them at our museum in Denton County,” County Judge Andy Eads said in the release. “Our Denton County Office of History and Culture staff worked closely with the National Archives and the library officials to make that happen.”

The Texas power grid is expected to hold up this winter, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Dec. 9. This is due in part to “tremendous supply growth on the ERCOT grid,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said, amid an influx of data centers coming to the state.

The overview: Since last winter, over 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity have been added to the ERCOT grid, Vegas said. That growth, which largely comes from battery storage and solar facilities, could be used to power about 2.8 million homes during periods of peak electric demand.

Zooming in: Under most weather conditions, there is a less than 2% chance of a grid emergency through February, ERCOT found.

However, Texas could be in trouble in the unlikely event that a repeat of Winter Storm Uri hits large parts of the state this winter, although ERCOT noted that the probability of such a severe storm happening again was "well under one percent." The February 2021 freeze devastated an unprepared power grid, resulting in nearly 250 deaths.