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RALEIGH: A health technology and services company has picked Chapel Hill over Boston for its headquarters, a move that will bring 400 jobs, economic investment and a slew of new customers to downtown restaurants, Gov. Roy Cooper and local leaders said Tuesday.

Well Dot Inc. says it combines data and artificial intelligence to simplify healthy living and access to care, while saving companies money. It has been operating out of a smaller space on East Franklin Street since launching earlier this year, but also has operations in Newton, Massachusetts, and has offices in Minneapolis and New York City.

“I think Well is choosing to expand here because they know we have a lot of talented people come to the Old Well for knowledge,” Cooper said, referencing the landmark well on the nearby UNC-Chapel Hill campus. “Now the new Well is coming to hire those talented people, and we’re excited about that.”

The company could have gone anywhere, Cooper said, but chose Chapel Hill over Boston for its 400-person, $3.1 million headquarters. Well currently has 25 employees in Chapel Hill, a company official said.

The company will benefit from a new Job Development Investment Grant, approved by the state’s Economic Investment Committee on Tuesday.

The state will provide nearly $4.4 million in incentives, with the town of Chapel Hill adding $900,000, half of which will include providing 45 parking spaces to the company, Chapel Hill economic development officer Dwight Bassett said. The town will provide the other half in the form of property tax discounts over eight years.

The company’s primary office will be at 419 W. Franklin St., in the former Carolina Ale House. Orange County will lease its property on West Franklin Street, just a block away, for the company’s future expansion. The county currently houses the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau and Skills Development Center in those buildings.

The county also will provide the company with a property tax-based incentive if Well buys the county’s property during its first five years, according to a news release.

The local and state incentives depend on the company’s investment in property and in jobs that pay an average annual salary of $63,020. The average wage in Orange County is $46,112.

The Chapel Hill Town Council and the Orange County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing and vote on their share of the incentives package at upcoming meetings.

Well Dot’s enterprise uses an AI-driven “Health Engine” to engage with a company’s employees through a phone-based app, sending them reminders, offering clinical and behavioral health tools, and connecting them with services and on-demand health experts. Employees also can take 21-day health journeys with rewards and hints along the way.

The company is excited about providing access to health care and information to more people, co-founder and chief operating officer David Werry said.

The current state of health care is frustrating for many people, co-founder and CEO Gary Loveman said. Well works “persistently in an encouraging way to help each of our members,” he said.

“There is one area that doesn’t require legislation, does not require an act of Congress to approve, and that is the ability of each person to obtain the health that is available to them given their clinical circumstances,” Loveman said. “What Well tries to do is use modern technologies to look at the clinical history of each of us and ask the question, how is Gary’s health compared to other guys roughly his age who have generally similar clinical circumstances.”

Cooper said Tuesday’s announcement of the new Well headquarters furthers his vision of a North Carolina “where people are better educated, where they’re healthier, where they have more money in their pockets and they have opportunities to live lives with purpose and abundance.”

Anthony Copeland, the state’s commerce secretary, echoed Cooper’s remarks.

“Innovative companies are attracted to North Carolina because our state offers the right ingredients for success,” Copeland said. “As a major hub for information technology and some of the leading research centers in medicine, the Research Triangle region offers the perfect place for Well’s next phase of growth.”

Loveman is a former CEO for Caesars Entertainment Corp. and president of consumer health at the insurer Aetna Inc. Werry also worked for Aetna and is a UNC-CH alumnus.

Chapel Hill, Orange County, the state and others were instrumental in the company’s vision for West Franklin Street, Werry said. “Importantly, seeing a vision of a business community on West Franklin Street and seeing what that could be and how that could bring an exciting environment for our team,” he said.

Loveman told Bloomberg in a recent report that Well’s model is different from other tech models, because it helps clients navigate their health care plans, as well as their health concerns.

Well launched in February and signed its first corporate client this year. It just finished raising $25 million in seed money, including from venture capital firm General Catalyst, Silicon Valley investor John Doerr and a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.

Orange County and Chapel Hill will do what they can to make sure Well succeeds, county commissioners Chair Penny Rich and Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said.

“These partnerships are how we make good results in our community,” Hemminger said. “The partnership with the state, the partnership with the county, with the university system, with the community college system, with the economic development teams. This is how we grow jobs and opportunities in Orange County and Chapel Hill and North Carolina, but it’s also how we make the world a better place.”

Before the Carolina Ale House opened, the former Yates Motor Co. building stood vacant for most of a decade.

In 2011, Occupy movement protesters and anarchists broke in and briefly held the building Chapel Hill Police Department tactical officers with rifles raided the building, arresting seven people. The raid ignited public outcry, months of debate and changes in Police Department policies.

The building is owned by Joe Riddle, a Fayetteville real estate investor and UNC-CH alumnus who owns four adjacent parcels, including public parking lots leased to the town of Chapel Hill.

Riddle paid $1.675 million for the Yates Motor Co. property in 2004, but his planned mix of high-end retail and residential uses fell through. County land records show the property is assessed for tax purposes at $2 million, more than double its 2014 tax value.

The building opened in 1945 as Julian Caston Motor Co. and was sold to the Yates family in 1955. New owners bought it in 1997 and changed the name to University Chrysler Plymouth. It’s been mostly vacant since 2003.

Riddle has said previously that he kept the building vacant while waiting for the right tenant to come along.

Parking has been a struggle for the town as it tries to attract new business, economic development officer Dwight Bassett has said. The Town Council will talk Wednesday about a possible new parking deck for West Franklin Street.

The council could ask the town manager to come back with financing options for a new deck and set a Feb. 12 hearing on a parking payment-in-lieu program that requires developers to provide parking or pay the town for future parking needs.

A new parking deck could cost at least $16 million, town staff reported. It is not clear if the owners of the West Franklin Street lots would be inclined to sell their land to the town.

A study found the town could need roughly 1,000 parking spaces downtown in the next decade. The most pressure is on East Franklin Street, where available public parking is 83% occupied and the town plans to add 100 spaces to the Wallace Parking Deck in the near future.

Public parking is still fairly available on West Franklin Street, where occupancy rates hover between 60% close to Carrboro and 68% to the east. One area proposed for a new West End Parking Deck, which could meet half of the future demand, runs between The Courtyard mixed-use development on South Roberson Street and 411 West restaurant on West Franklin Street.

An optional site would be directly behind The Courtyard shops and apartments. The town leases about 130 public parking spaces on those lots and has another 64 public parking spaces on a town-owned lot at 415 W. Franklin St. The council weighed developing 415 W. Franklin St. to include a parking deck before, but the proposed deal fell through.

“It’s going to be somewhat painful, because we’re going to lose those parking places during that time period, so we’ll be coming up with some really creative approaches to how we can short-term add some spaces on street or otherwise to fulfill this need,” Bassett said.

Bassett told the Council Committee on Economic Sustainability in September that adding 455 spaces in a West End Parking Deck could support 300,000 square feet of retail, 100,000 square feet of office space or 325 apartments.