Stung last year when a Japanese pharmaceutical giant halted the relocation of its newly acquired Long Island biotech company to Ardsley, Westchester County”™s biotechnology sector is about to rebound in efforts to build an industry cluster here.
A leading biotech tenant in Westchester is eyeing a $27.9-million headquarters relocation and expansion within the county at an office-park site eyed for purchase by the county”™s largest biotech landlord.
BioMed Realty Trust Inc., owner of The Landmark at Eastview, the 1.1.-million-square-foot biotech campus on Old Saw Mill River Road, is expected to buy the largely vacant Ardsley Park and Science and Technology Center on Saw Mill River Road in Greenburgh from Astellas Pharma Inc., Japan”™s second-largest pharmaceutical company. The deal would add six buildings totaling about 400,000 square feet of laboratory and office space on a 43-acre campus to the life-sciences property portfolio of BioMed, a real estate investment trust headquartered in San Diego, Calif.
A BioMed Realty spokesman did not respond to a request to confirm the pending deal.
OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc., a cancer drug developer based on Long Island, in 2009 paid $27 million to buy the Ardsley campus from Purdue Pharma Inc. OSI planned to spend about $95 million in all to consolidate its U.S. operations and relocate some 350 employees to Ardsley, where it expected to grow to at least 600 employees by 2012.
OSI”™s construction project suddenly was shut down last June, soon after Tokyo-based Astellas Pharma in a hostile takeover completed a $4 billion cash deal for OSI. Two months later, officials at Astellas Pharma U.S Inc. announced plans to close the Ardsley facility by June 2011.  BioMed Realty, the prospective new landlord, is expected to lease about 130,000 square feet of space in two Ardsley Park buildings to Acorda Therapeutics Inc. The publicly traded company might lease an additional 120,000 square feet over the next several years, Acorda officials said in their recent application to the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency for project tax breaks.
Based in Hawthorne, Acorda develops and markets drugs that improve neurological function in persons with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and other nervous-system disorders. The company to date has marketed two commercial products, Ampyra extended-release tablets to improve walking in MS patients, and Zanaflex capsules, a short-acting drug to manage spasticity.
Acorda officials in their project proposal to the IDA said the company has outgrown its Hawthorne facility at 15 Skyline Drive in the Mid-Westchester Executive Park. It plans to relocate all of its 159 current employees to Ardsley. Over the next five years, Acorda expects to add 190 biotech jobs there with an average annual salary of $120,000.
Acorda officials said the company will consider alternative relocation sites in New Jersey and Connecticut if unable to complete the Ardsley deal. They said state benefits and incentives from the Excelsior Jobs Program and New York State Energy and Research Development Authority and an estimated $1.1-million sales tax exemption from the county IDA are needed to keep the company in New York.
BioMed Realty is expected to assume OSI”™s mortgage at Ardsley Park for its payment in lieu of taxes or PILOT agreement with the town of Greenburgh and Ardsley Union Free School District. OSI, which has been negotiating with town officials over PILOT terms, is due to pay $950,000 this year on its abandoned property. An attorney for OSI told county IDA officials in December the company will repay about $3 million in sales tax benefits from the IDA on the aborted renovations project.
A spokeswoman for Acorda Therapeutics said the company cannot yet comment on its relocation plans.
