Pfizer is pondering which city firm to anoint as its real estate adviser to sell its two East 42nd Street properties and consolidate into a new city location.
In October, the company said it would be give up the headquarters complex to move to more technologically modern digs, and put out a call to brokerage firms.
Our sources say five contestants were to take part in the tour-and-interview “beauty contest” last week.
CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Avison Young and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank even toured at the same time.
But sources said JLL was a no-show, as its ace capital markets brokers, Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen and Scott Latham, had just joined Colliers International.
Pfizer’s 33-story headquarters with 675,000 square feet at 235 E. 42nd St. on the west side of Second Avenue was developed in 1960.
The adjacent 219 E. 42nd St., a squat, nine-story building with 300,000 square feet, was developed in 1909. It was purchased by Pfizer in 1949 for $9.625 million.
But now both buildings need renovations to bring them into the tech-hefty 21st century and attract a millennial workforce.
Since it was founded in Brooklyn in 1849, Pfizer has been in and out of numerous city buildings, especially in the Third Avenue and East 42nd Street area, expanding and contracting as the pharmaceutical world changed.
During a previous reshuffling in 2003, Pfizer, which makes Viagra, obtained a $46.1 million incentive package based on adding 4,300 jobs by the end of the 15 years. That never happened.
Pfizer bought 685 Third Ave. for $250 million from CALpers in 2003 when it obtained incentives, but in 2008, when it was laying off workers, sold it at a loss for $190 million to TIAA.
Pfizer also got crushed by Obama earlier this year when the company wanted to buy Botox maker Allergan for $160 billion so as to move its headquarters to Ireland for tax reasons. This is exactly the kind of off-shore relocation President-elect Donald Trump is hoping to end by providing corporate tax cuts.
For Pfizer’s current city employees, a local move to the reinvented 390 Madison or soon-to-be 1 Vanderbilt may become the best temptation, so any offers to buy the Pfizer buildings from their developers, L&L and SL Green, respectively, may also come as a package deal with a lease for those properties.
But if Pfizer needs splashier surroundings, it could focus on Hudson Yards and a similar swap-like pact with Related, Moinian or Tishman Speyer, albeit some of the towers won’t be ready in 2019. Silverstein’s new 2 World Trade Center would also have a longer move-in horizon.
For now, the next move will be to assign a capital markets team, and the pill is in Pfizer’s court.
Neither the drugmaker nor the real estate companies’ media reps responded to requests for comment.
