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Bayer Opens Woodbridge Lab
33,000-square-foot facility first phase
of $80 million expansion
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Business New Haven
3/6/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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Research Drive in Woodbridge has finally begun to live up to its name.
Bayer Pharmaceutical North America opened the doors to its new Woodbridge Research Laboratory on February 22. The $5 million, 33,000-square-foot building at 4 Research Drive, which houses combinatorial chemistry research laboratories, is owned by Research Development of Woodbridge LLC, which leases it to Bayer.
The new facility is the first phase of an $80 million expansion of Bayer's research center, which the company says will result in the creation of about 200 jobs.
Bayer officials said the Woodbridge lab was the first research facility in Connecticut to be built by a private developer for use by a pharmaceutical company. The building was financed by Webster Bank, with a $600,000 loan guarantee from Connecticut Innovations Inc. About 30 Bayer scientists and support staff will inhabit the structure.
The Woodbridge building is the first step in a major expansion of research facilities for Bayer. The centerpiece will be a $53 million, 125,000-square-foot chemistry research building in West Haven, which will house 125 scientists conducting drug-discovery research. It is scheduled to open next year.
Another Bayer facility, the High Technology Center, is scheduled to open in West Haven later this year. The high-throughput screening facility is designed to test the effectiveness of chemical compounds against targeted diseases. Employing computer-based robotics, it will house 15 new biologists, molecular biologists and computer scientists.
The February 22 event also marked the introduction to the community of Wolfgang Plischke, the new president of Bayer Pharmaceutical Division North America. By training a molecular biologist, Plischke most recently headed Bayer's health-care business in Japan.
Bayer's expansion, Plischke said, “is part of a worldwide strategy to invest more in drug discovery. The faster we can bring lifesaving, safe drugs to market, the faster we do our job [and] the sooner we can help. That's why we've come to Woodbridge.”
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Bayer Corp. generated 1998 sales of $8.1 billion and employs some 23,000 workers. It is a division of the worldwide Bayer Group, a $31 billion life sciences, polymers and specialty chemicals group based in Leverkusen, Germany.
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