February 21, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
WALLINGFORD, Conn. – A change in zoning rules will prevent Bristol-Myers Squibb from selling its 180-acre campus in Connecticut.
The drug giant had planned to sell the property to an unnamed boarding school, but city zoning officials changed the rules to “eliminate religion, education and philanthropy as accepted land uses,” in the zone occupied by the BMS campus, the New Haven Register reported last week. BMS officials told the city’s zoning commission that any changes to the city code would kill the deal to sell the 982,000-square-foot campus.
BMS told the commissioners that outside of the boarding school, it had received no interest in the property since it first announced its intentions to sell the land parcel. Commissioners though said allowing a school on the property would create safety problems, the Record Journal reported. There was also concern that allowing educational, philanthropic and religious uses in the zoned area would be a detriment to the city’s tax base. The Record Journal said BMS paid $2.3 million in property taxes to Wallingford in 2015.
BMS announced in 2015 that the majority of its employees at the Wallingford site would be shifted to its Boston facility among others, the Register reported. Then in December 2016, Bristol-Myers announced it was pulling out of Connecticut altogether by the end of 2018. The company said in December that the move was part of changes to the needs of its business and its geographic presence. With the pull out of Connecticut, BMS said it was concentrating its research strength in New Jersey, Boston and San Francisco. BMS’ shift out of Connecticut could cost the state approximately 400 jobs, the Register said.
In October 2016, BMS announced it would shift its operating model to become a “more competitive and agile” research and development organization. While it plans to leave Connecticut, the company has been investing in its other R&D sites, including a new research-and-development building in Lawrenceville, N.J. and upgrades to support biologics development in New Brunswick, N.J. The company is also developing a state-of-the-art research facility in Cambridge, Mass.
With the sale of the land killed off by city officials that leaves BMS still looking for a buyer during a time when the company is facing a number of challenges. Since January, the company has seen its stock prices drop by about 15 percent and $50 billion in market cap. BMS has gone from the fourth most valuable pharmaceutical company in the United States to the ninth, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. Much of that has to do with a major setback the company had last year with its lead PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo. In August 2016, BMS announced Phase III data showing Opdivo failed to meet its endpoints of progression-free survival in lung cancer patients expressing PD-L1 at 5 percent.
Shares of Bristol-Myers are down this morning, trading at $53.68 as of 10:48 a.m.
