Well looks like the entire town of New London, Conn. is going to get screwed by Pfizer.
“Look what they did,” Mr. Cristofaro said on Thursday. “They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away.”
That sentiment has been echoing around New London since Monday, when Pfizer, the giant drug company, announced it would leave the city just eight years after its arrival led to a debate about urban redevelopment that rumbled through the United States Supreme Court, and reset the boundaries for governments to seize private land for commercial use.
Pfizer said it would pull 1,400 jobs out of New London within two years and move most of them a few miles away to a campus it owns in Groton, Conn., as a cost-cutting measure. It would leave behind the city’s biggest office complex and an adjacent swath of barren land that was cleared of dozens of homes to make room for a hotel, stores and condominiums that were never built.
[…]
After Pfizer completed its $67 billion acquisition of Wyeth, another drug giant, in October, Ms. Power said, “We had a lot of real estate that we had to make strategic decisions about.” She said Pfizer would try to sell or lease its buildings in New London and would “continue to pay our taxes to the city as scheduled.”
The complex is currently assessed at $220 million, said Robert M. Pero, a city councilman who is scheduled to become mayor next month. The company pays tax on 20 percent of that value and the state pays an additional 40 percent, Mr. Pero said. That arrangement is scheduled to end in 2011, around the time Pfizer, which is currently the city’s biggest taxpayer, expects to complete its withdrawal.
“Basically, our economy lost a thousand jobs, but we still have a building,” Mr. Pero said. Then again, he added, “I don’t know who’s going to be looking for a building like that in this economy.”
Basically you suck Mr. Pero. Good job wrecking your town’s economy. Not only has your economy lost thousands of jobs you’ve gone out and wrecked considerale amounts of private property…for nothing. On top of this you’ve spent millions of dollars that could have been spent elsehwere.
Mr. Pero said that he was offended that Pfizer did not notify city officials about the decision before Monday or give them a chance to argue against it or even fully understand it.
Oh the irony. Hmmm how did Ms. Kelo feel?
