With Brooklyn’s residential real estate market still slumping, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has sold more than half of its former South Williamsburg complex to a company planning to bring new light-manufacturing and commercial jobs to the long-shuttered site.
Pfizer today announced it sold eight of 13 acres at the Flushing Avenue complex – the Fortune 500 firm’s 162-year-old birthplace – to Acumen Capital Partners of Long Island City.
The move comes two years after Pfizer, citing a tough economic climate, dropped plans to redevelop the site with a mixed-use plan anticipated to bring more than 1,000 apartments.
Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President Carl Hum called the deal “great news,” adding the new jobs would replace some of the 600 lost when Pfizer shut its massive plant in 2008.
But the news was a bitter pill for Assemblyman Vito Lopez.
The Brooklyn Democratic Party boss said he plans to introduce legislation to seize Pfizer’s remaining five acres north of the plant through eminent domain so that roughly 1,800 units of affordable housing can still be built.
“I’m very disappointed. Pfizer made a lot of promises about affordable housing but never came through,” said Lopez, who introduced similar legislation in 2008 that stalled.
Pfizer in a statement said it would leave the remaining five acre intact “for future development,” possibly “affordable housing.”
Details of the sale and number of jobs Acumen plans to bring in were unavailable at press time. Acumen did not return messages.