Pfizer Laying Off 1400 in New York City, Will Pay Back Tax Breaks and Puts Office Building Up for Sale

The corporate headquarters will remain but the one large office building on Third Avenue goes up for sale. Pfizer started closing facilities and plants back in 2007 and then once the purchase of Wyeth came in, there were more announced. BD

Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, plans to lay off or relocate up to 1,400 New York City employees, seven years after receiving millions of dollars in tax breaks to create jobs in the city.

On Monday the company, which has already scrapped about 2,000 positions, also put its office tower at 685 Third Avenue up for sale. Pfizer officials said the company’s world headquarters would remain in the office tower at 235 East 42nd Street, near Grand Central Terminal. The company, which has been based in New York City since its founding in 1849, has about 4,400 employees here.

The Bloomberg administration has been far more stingy than Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s was in granting tax breaks to corporations threatening to leave New York. It has also worked to strengthen the penalties for companies that violate job-retention agreements.

Under the terms of its deal with Pfizer, the city will seek to recover double the $12 million in tax breaks that the company ultimately used if Pfizer eliminates more than 450 jobs, said David Lombino, a spokesman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

Joan Campion, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, acknowledged that the company had talked to the city about repaying the tax benefits. She said she did not know the exact number of jobs that would be cut, or moved to other offices. A government official who had been briefed on the company’s plans, but who declined to be named because he was not authorized to reveal them, said that between 800 and 1,400 jobs would leave the city.