Pfizer: What's Closing and When

Pfizer, Inc. and the Nanuet School District reached a tax litigation settlement which would also include the Town of Orangetown. and the Nanuet Board of Education discussed this settlement at their public budget meeting Monday night. The Orangetown Town Board still has to approve the settlement.

“They have over 200+ acres of undeveloped land,” said Board President Anne Byrne. In the settlement, Pfizer agreed to limit development of the 200+ acres to either commercial or over-55 adult housing, both of which will have minimal impact on future school district budgets and tax levies. For more details on their settlement, refer to this .

“Roughly two-thirds of the property is developed,” said Grace Ann Arnold, Pfizer Spokesperson. “One-third is buffer property to the west of the site.” Arnold is referring to the buildings closer to Highland Avenue.

Arnold goes on to explain what exactly does “west” of the site means and, of the 550 acres of property Pfizer sits on, which buildings are closing and when.

“The site is a hybrid site because it houses both manufacturing and research,” said Arnold.

The manufacturing is on the north end of the site and research on the south. There are four roads that border the 550 acres that make up the Pfizer property:

• Northern border: Convent Road
• Southern border: Route 304
• Eastern border: Middletown Road
• Western border: Highland Avenue

From Route 304, there are three research facility buildings that are currently empty. One of the three still has an auditorium that is used for meetings.

As for the manufacturing side, to name the buildings that are up and running is more difficult because some of the operations share buildings, said Arnold. Because of this, Arnold explains which operations, not buildings, will be closing.

There are five distinct manufacturing operations on site and four of them are going to be impacted and are exiting. The fifth operation, which is not exiting, is small and is in Pearl River.

Here’s the approximate exiting timeline:

Mid-2011: “A part of the Prevnar Pediatric Vaccine Manufacturing Process will be the first one to be impacted and exited. This opens up one building complex.” This Prevnar process is made up of several steps and layers. Three of the steps in the process take place at this Pfizer location and those operations will be the ones that are closing.

Mid-2012: Consumer Healthcare Production is the second operation to close. This production makes the familiar Centrum family of multivitamins for the U.S. market such as Centrum, Centrum Silver, Centrum Performance, Centrum Cardio, Centrum Chewables, Centrum Kids and Centrum Ultra Women’s. “This is one of the operations that occupies a shared building  so only part of the building will be exiting.” Arnold added that several hundred-thousand square feet will open up with the closure of this operation.

2017/2018 is the approximate time frame for when the last two operations will exit. This time frame can change though because it’s so far down the road. Both of these operations are in a shared space so, again, only parts of a building will be exiting. The last two operations exiting are related to Prevnar:

• Formulations, or the mixing of vaccine ingredients
• Filling, referring to the filling of syringes and mulit-vial doses

Editor's note: This report has been changed to reflect the fact that the Orangetown Town Board has not approved the settlement with Pfizer.