Pfizer is officially bidding adieu to its sprawling research site in San Diego as it readjusts its local footprint and moves into a new site.
The company sold its five-building campus, located on Science Center Drive in the San Diego neighborhood of Torrey Pines, to life sciences real estate firm BioMed Realty for $255 million, local newspaper The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
BioMed realty already owns several neighboring properties on Science Center Drive, according to the life science real estate manager’s website. With the "irreplaceable campus" it picked up from Pfizer, the company plans to "offer a best-in-class setting at the campus in support of our tenants’ missions to advance human health," a BioMed spokesperson told Fierce in an emailed statement.
Pfizer’s roots in San Diego stretch back decades. In 2004, the company bought the then 33-acre site for $372 million to house late-stage clinical trial operations for oncology and HIV divisions.
In 2012, the company sold off three of its buildings for $51 million, retaining a 25-acre campus with five buildings that total more than 500,000 square feet of facilities.
Scientists at the San Diego site have aided in the discovery and development of a number of cancer therapies, including blockbuster breast cancer med Ibrance, according to Pfizer.
Separately, Pfizer is separately letting go of 56 employees stationed at one of the Science Center Drive addresses, according to a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice. The layoffs will take effect on June 2, but a company spokesperson said that the "sale of the previous site and the employment decisions are not associated or connected to one another."
“Pfizer is improving its R&D productivity and efficiency with a sharpened focus on opportunities and simplifying the way it works, which we believe will deliver the greatest impact for patients,” the spokesperson explained. “All job-related decisions have and will be made with transparency, compassion, and respect, and in compliance with applicable laws. Pfizer does not take these changes lightly.”
Last year, the company’s oncology arm inked a 15-year lease at a nearby spot in Torrey Heights. The new site features 230,000 square feet across two buildings. That campus, owned by Breakthrough Properties, is comprised of 10 acres and opened last fall.
Also operating out of the Torrey Heights campus are medical device maker BD and global contract research organization Charles River Laboratories.
It’s not clear when Pfizer is officially moving in, but in October the company was ready to “soon open the doors” to a new site to "enable world-class scientific innovation and the delivery of impactful new medicines to patients with cancer," chief scientific officer for oncology R&D and La Jolla site head, Jeff Settleman, Ph.D., said in a statement.