Pfizer sells 200 acres in Pearl River

PEARL RIVER - Pfizer has sold about 200 acres of its property here to a real estate group that wants to create a campus that would mix science, technology, educational and retail businesses.

Under the agreement, the California-based Industrial Realty Group gets 2 million square feet and about 38 buildings containing laboratory, pharmaceutical manufacturing, office and support space. Pfizer retains ownership of about 25 acres including three buildings.

"Rockland County's premiere research facility will be re-imagined into a shopping, dining, meeting and educational destination at Pearl River's historic campus," reads a description on a website about the project.

"The site has extensive potential,"John Mase, IRG's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "IRG will pursue redevelopment with opportunities for retail, office, industrial and other commercial users. We have already had a wide range of tenants show interest in the project."

A preliminary agreement to sell the property was announced in May.

Pfizer is keeping its research and development facilities at the Middletown Road site, as well as undeveloped land on the property, said Susan Rutledge, Pfizer's Pearl River spokeswoman. The drugmaker will continue to manufacture its Prevnar vaccine under a short-term lease-back agreement with IRG through 2016. Manufacturing of Pfizer's oncology drugs will remain at the Pearl River campus under a long-term lease.

Pfizer plans to keep up to 600 jobs onsite after 2017, with a research site and oncology medication production located there, Rutledge said.

Other businesses at the site – Protein Sciences and Anellotech – will be leasing space from IRG.

Amy Wertheim of Stop Anellotech said the grassroots group opposing the bio-tech facility hopes IRG will properly remediate the land that will be developed. The group is awaiting a court decision regarding Anellotech, a petrochemical start-up that opponents fear will negatively affect air quality and public health.

Orangetown Supervisor Andy Stewart said he hoped the sale of the vacant land and buildings "will result in good, clean redevelopment of this site that will begin to fill the hole in the local tax base left by Pfizer's downsizing process. ... I am looking forward to a fair and thorough review of any proposals IRG brings to the town."

County Executive Ed Day said he supported IRG's plan to repurpose the property, and called the fact that Pfizer would keep hundreds of jobs at the site "a tremendous accomplishment given the circumstances."

"This is a revenue story to make sure that taxes are moderated in Rockland County," said Day, who noted the property was a major town and school district taxpayer.

There are about 1,300 Pfizer employees in Pearl River, a number that will remain steady until June. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there were about 5,000 workers at the site under former owners, including Lederle Laboratories.

The site is where Dr. Ernst Lederle produced diphtheria antitoxins in 1907. Throughout the years, vaccines for smallpox, typhoid and pneumonia were developed there.

The Rockland Economic Development Corp. and its former president, Michael DiTullo, worked closely with Pfizer and IRG during the transition.

"We at the REDC look forward to working with IRG in re-positioning this very valuable property as a future site of job creation in Rockland County," said Richard Struck, its interim president and CEO.