Repurposing Big Pharma's Castoffs: Protein Sciences Takes Slice of Pfizer's Pearl River Plant

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Reported by Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Over the past few years, plant closures throughout the pharmaceutical-biotech industry had become so common that news of another barely spurred interest beyond those immediately affected. Across North America, the dreaded announcements rolled out as the industry began running a meaner and leaner operational plan. Despite the regularity of these closings, some perceived that a few of the sites, the mega sites, were somehow sacrosanct.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Pfizer's (NYSE:PFE) (New York, New York) 2010 decision to severely trim operations at its 550-acre, 2.5 million-square-foot campus in Pearl River, New York, was met with almost a state of disbelief for locals. Pfizer had gained the massive facility with its $68 billion purchase of Wyeth in 2009. More than 100 years old, the plant was one of the area's largest employers, and remains so, despite slashing its local workforce by nearly half to 1,900. In every sense of the word, Pearl River was a company town, or perhaps more accurately, an industry town.

All is not forsaken for the site's future. While promising to retain a portion for its own research and development use, Pfizer actively began marketing the property as "move-in" ready a year ago. Echoing a common scenario throughout the country, the company hoped to attract other life science companies that could move in and hit the ground running. It surely beat the bleak alternative of knocking down the empty buildings.

A ray of light for the site came with Protein Sciences Corporation's (Meriden, Connecticut) decision to sign a five-year lease for two manufacturing buildings, for a total of 83,000 square feet of space. Protein Sciences is nearing U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its Flublok, the world's first recombinant influenza vaccine. As the buildings were designed for vaccine manufacturing, with minimal effort and cost, production can begin. Initially, the company expects to employ 50, with the possibility of an additional 100 jobs over coming years.

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