Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave have teamed up with Palmer Capital to buy Pfizer’s sprawling 297-acre research and development site in Sandwich, Kent.
Discovery Park Limited was set up as a special purpose vehicle to buy the site, famed for its discovery of Viagra. It comprises 3m sq ft of commercial space including laboratories, offices and warehouses.
Paul Barber, a former managing director of Priority Sites, the government regeneration company, will become managing director of Discovery Park Limited.
Barber said: “Pfizer has taken a lease of around 250,000 sq ft of offices and laboratories and together with our other tenants we have around 1,000 people employed on site. We have received several enquiries from companies looking to locate to this site and we will progress these with extreme vigour.”
It has been up for sale since May 2011 when Pfizer appointed CBRE to find a buyer.
Developer London & Metropolitan had been appointed preferred bidder at the start of the year, but a period of legal exclusivity to buy it expired and ended without a deal.
Pfizer announced at the time it would be closing its operation in Sandwich, which employed 2,400 people. It said that 650 jobs at the Discovery Park would remain at the site.
joanna.bourke@estatesgazette.com
