nothin Alexion’s Flight: New Haven’s Next Steps | New Haven Independent

Alexion’s Flight: New Haven’s Next Steps

Yes, it hurt that Alexion Pharmaceuticals announced this week that it will move its headquarters to Boston.

Yes, it’s hard to compete against bigger cities.

But consider: New Haven still got more jobs and lab space than promised in the original deal to have the company build a government-assisted office tower at 100 College St. New Haven’s bioscience sector is growing.

And officials are ready to tackle short-term and long-term challenges in the wake of the Alexion move.

That’s the message from city government development chief Matthew Nemerson and Economic Development Corporation chief Virginia Kozlowski.

They released a statement following Alexion’s announcement laying out how they see the road ahead.

The statement follows:

Yesterday, Alexion Pharmaceuticals announced a broad restructuring of the company aimed at cutting costs, rebuilding Alexion’s research and development pipeline and strengthening the firm’s future financial prospects. While the restructuring will create difficulties here in New Haven and is disappointing in many ways, we should remember to take great pride in the work the Winstanley Company, the City, Yale University, the State and the former Alexion management did to bring the company back to New Haven in the first place. We will continue to reap many substantial rewards as the new management of the company moves forward with considerable employment, global research and economic impact at 100 College Street.

Our immediate priority is to assist the scientists and world-class researchers who may be laid off. Many of them recently joined the company and signed on to Alexion’s mission and support of patients with rare and often devastating diseases. The City will work closely with these talented people with the goal of identifying new career opportunities for them. They may well become key workers at other fast growing local firms who need their skills.

Moving forward, our bioscience ecosystem continues on a strong growth trend. With Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital as major anchors, New Haven institutions are in receipt of $421 million in NIH research grants. This is the 14th highest total in the nation and a further indication that the talent and quality of science in New Haven remains at the center of our economic strategy. The pipeline of talent in New Haven includes over 30 biotech companies, all working on cutting-edge research, and a major part of the City’s employment growth in recent years.
Total city employment reached 81,900 in 2016, with over 5,000 jobs gained in New Haven since 2010. The City’s efforts to bring SCSU and Gateway together to create a local bio-ladder and successes such Promise New Haven internship and innovation programs and New Haven Works job readiness and connection efforts continue to connect many global opportunities to individuals in New Haven.

It is important to clarify that when the College Street crossing conversation began more than six years ago, the City’s 100 College Street Development and Land Disposition Agreement included a minimum requirement for the developer to construct a 225,000 s.f. med/lab office building, of which Alexion might take only 60%. Ultimately, the developer constructed 495,000 s.f. after Alexion was secured as the main tenant and Alexion planned to take all of this space. This larger structure will continue as Alexion’s global center for research excellence and home to over 450 of Alexion’s top-tier employees. Moreover, the building as designed can now support New Haven’s strong pipeline and demand for R&D space in a cost-competitive location relative to Boston and New York.

Of course, we fully understand the potentially steep road ahead of us. We are prepared to meet that challenge through support for exceptional research, through infrastructure investments and through connections back into our neighborhoods with robust workforce pipelines.
The City must find ways to move forward to build a critical mass of global knowledge creating firms faster than almost any other small to mid-sized city/region. It can do so in part through a focused and concerted effort to complete the Downtown Crossing infrastructure, with Phase 2 – Orange Street — going into construction next year and Phase 3 ‑Temple Street – in design now.

We will aggressively move to full implementation of the Hill to Downtown Community Plan in order to restore community connections, address the Church Street South situation and create a welcoming and equitable environment for residents and employees. We will continue to advocate to fix the things that will make us competitive to land major employers and keep them here, such as better transportation connections by expanding the service at Tweed Airport to locations near Washington DC and major mid-western connection HUBs and through better and faster commuter service to New York City.

Tuesday’s announcement is one more reminder that threats to our job base will continue, not due to lack of effort, planning or execution of ideas, but due to our relative smaller size and lack of critical mass of growth firms.

We are blessed and cursed to be so close to two (NYC and Boston) of America’s top five or ten most important job creating mega-cities.
We will remain vigilant and relentless in searching for new opportunities for job and economic growth and we look forward to working with you on these strategies, plans and implementations.

Please call us with ideas, comments, criticisms and observations. It will take all of us working together to keep New Haven competing and winning in the current global economic community.

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