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column/with poll: Pfizer closing in Ann Arbor feels like a lifetime ago
The calendar doesn’t lie: Five years ago, Ann Arbor learned that its largest private employer was closing. The news, as I wrote at the time, made “all of Ann Arbor reel from the blow.” At ...
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Here's an update on our analysis of Pfizer's major restructuring announcement today:
Some scientists who used to work at Pfizer's 174-acre Ann Arbor site were told today the site they transferred to would close.
A Pfizer spokesman confirmed that 112 workers formerly employed by the pharmaceutical giant in Ann Arbor were transferred to the company's site in St. Louis after Pfizer left this area.
Pfizer announced today that it would close its site in the St. Louis area, cutting some 600 jobs. It was not immediately clear how many ex-Ann Arbor Pfizer workers transferred to St. Louis were still working there.
Pfizer reportedly had recently invested $250 million in renovations
at the St. Louis facilities - an eerie reminder of what happened in Ann
Arbor, where Pfizer had spent $300 million in facility upgrades in the years leading up to its closure announcement.
Pfizer spokesman Rick Chambers said he could not confirm how many ex-Ann Arbor Pfizer workers were still working for the pharmaceutical company's St. Louis site after accepting transfers there.
"Movement happens in this company all the time," Chambers said.
As part of its downsizing in St. Louis, Pfizer said it would sell its 1.3-million-square-foot site there to Creve Coeur-based Monsanto for $435 million, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That's more than four times the size of the $108 million sale price of Pfizer's 2-million-square-foot Ann Arbor campus to the University of Michigan.
The announcement comes nearly three years after the drugmaker said
in January 2007 it would close its 30-building campus in Ann
Arbor, displacing more than 2,100 workers.
About one-third of those workers accepted jobs with Pfizer. Another third are believed to have accepted jobs with other major pharmaceutical companies. Some 400 to 500 are believe to have stayed in Ann Arbor.
Contact AnnArbor.com's Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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