Pfizer to Consolidate St. Louis Offices at New $200 Million+ Facility, Will Keep 450 Jobs
November 23, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Pfizer plans to consolidate its two locations in St. Louis into a new research-and-development campus in Chesterfield, Missouri. It has two current sites, one at the Monsanto Chesterfield Village Research Center and the other at the Missouri Research Park in St. Charles County.
Pfizer indicates that the new location will have approximately 625 employees and contractors, and is projected to cost more than $200 million to build. The company also plans to move its biotherapeutics and pharmaceutical sciences units to the new location. A Pfizer spokeswoman indicated that the work there will focus on developing biologics and vaccines for clinical trials.
The facility is being built by Clayco and CRG, a real estate developer. Once completed, which is planned for 2020, Pfizer will lease the building.
In addition, the state of Missouri is gifting Pfizer with $5 million from the Missouri Works program and $800,000 from the Missouri Works Training program. Under this agreement with the state, the company will create 80 jobs by the time it launches the new location. Local tax incentives with St. Louis County officials are still being negotiated.
“Missouri is an important part of Pfizer’s R&D network, and we’re proud of the world-class employee base we’ve built here,” said John Ludwig, senior vice president of BioTherapeutics Research for Pfizer, in a statement. “Thanks to the support we’ve received from the state of Missouri, St. Louis County and Chesterfield, our new St. Louis laboratory facility will provide the right location and space as we continue to evolve our business over the coming years.”
The new facility is expected to be 460,000 square feet and four to five stories, including a parking structure. Currently, Pfizer occupies 250,000 square feet of lab and manufacturing facilities, in addition to 70,000 square feet of office space in the area. Its lease with Monsanto expires in 2020. In 2010, Pfizer sold the Chesterfield Village Research Center to Monsanto for $435 million. At that time, Pfizer cut about 60 percent, or 600 of 1,000 jobs, at that location when it bought Wyeth .
Construction is expected to begin in the middle of 2017.
In other news, Pfizer has sued the state of Texas for releasing drug pricing information to elected officials. The data is related to the Texas Medicaid program, and Pfizer argues that the information is a trade secret.
In the lawsuit, Pfizer claims that the Texas Department of Health and Human Services gave its negotiated price schedule to Senator Charles Schwertner, who is chairman of the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. This was not public information.
The lawsuit notes that the “Plaintiff is required to report highly confidential detailed pricing and rebate information for its drugs included in the Texas Medicaid Vendor Drug Program…” The Houston Chronicle, in its article, argued that taxpayers and citizens, as well as the state government, should have that information.
However, the lawsuit cites laws that guarantee that confidentiality.