Wyeth to shut a Collegeville office as merger looms
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Updated: Drugmaker Wyeth, soon to be acquired by Pfizer, is pulling out of 200 Campus Drive in the Highbridge at Providence office park next to its Collegeville headquarters.
The space Wyeth is giving up houses up to 450 workers, said Steve Spaeder, president of BPG Development Co. in Philadelphia, an affiliate of owner BPG Properties Ltd. Wyeth exercized its option to end the lease next year. BPG hired Michael Morrone and Whitney Hunter of office broker Jones Lang LaSalle to find new tenants.
Wyeth employs around 3,600 Collegeville and another 900 in Malvern and other PA sites, says spokesman Doug Petkus. The company bought the former Rhone Poulenc Rorer office campus next to the BPG site in 2001 and moved operations there from Radnor, eventually expanding the campus to a total of 1.8 million square feet, said Spaeder. It also leased the neighboring three- and four-story Highview buildings from BPG to accomodate some of the workers moved from Radnor.
Petkus says Wyeth will continue to lease another site, 400 Campus Drive, til 2013. He said the company told the landlord it was leaving 200 Campus this summer, but had made the decision late last year, before the Pfizer deal was announced in January.
Wyeth hasn't announced plans to leave or lease the buildings it owns. Workers in both Malvern and Collegeville are waiting for word on Pfizer's plans for its local operations after the deal closes this fall. The company is expected to cut workers to reduce expenses from the deal, originally priced at $68 billion.
The market is slow, Spaeder said, but there's still interest in large blocks of modern suburban office space, especially from drug companies. "I have two strong prospects for this building today," he told me.