Construction of a long-anticipated, near-complete Seagen pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Everett, Washington, has been halted by Pfizer, the pharma giant that recently acquired Seagen.
Approximately 120 employees who were working on the initial setup of the site will be laid off, according to Pfizer, which paid $43 billion to acquire the company in December. Medicines Seagen intended to produce at the new plant will be manufactured in North Carolina, “which will have increased capacity with ongoing expansion of the facility,” Pfizer said in a statement.
“The site was intended to produce oncology medicines,” New York-based Pfizer said. “The expanded (North Carolina) site will have the technological capability and available capacity for the manufacturing of these essential products.”
Seagen, originally known as Seattle Genetics, first announced the new 270,000-square-foot facility in April 2022. According to regulatory filings that year, the company expected to spend $350 million to $400 million building the facility.
At the time of the announcement, Seagen said it expected to employ up to 200 highly skilled workers to produce cancer medicine for clinical trials and for the commercial market.
The plant’s cancellation was a disappointing conclusion to the work it took for Everett to bring Seagen there, said Dan Eernissee, the director of economic development for the city of Everett. The plant would’ve brought a new industry to Everett and the northern Puget Sound region, he said.
“The biggest takeaway is that this is an opportunity that we won’t have going forward, at least not near term,” Eernissee said. “That could change if another biotechnology company came in to manufacture these pharmaceuticals here and took this building over.”
Laid off employees can be placed at Seagen’s Bothell site or apply to roles within Pfizer, the company said in an email.
While Seagen wouldn’t be the biggest employer in the area, as Everett has much larger companies such as Boeing employing thousands of people, residents will miss out on high-paying jobs, Eernissee said.
“The typical Walmart employs more than” the Seagen facility would have, he said. But unlike Walmart, “these were high-end, specialized professional jobs and industries that would have really added to the mix of our economy.”
At the same time, Everett retains a strong industrial footprint, Eernissee said. Besides Boeing, Everett has clean energy and aerospace companies with plants there, such as Bill Gates-founded nuclear energy startup TerraPower and fusion-power company Helion.
The priority for Everett’s economic development is to protect the industries it has. But the city is on a positive trajectory in growing more industrial clusters, Eernissee said. He said he wants Everett to be a “magnetic force attracting new companies.”
In August, Seagen contracted Skanska to build the plant for $215 million. The construction company said in a statement at the time that it expected completion at the end of this year.
Those plans changed with the $43 billion Pfizer acquisition of Seagen, which was announced in March 2023 and completed in December.
Seagen specializes in cancer treatments. The acquisition would enhance Pfizer’s presence in the oncology market and contribute to its financial goals, Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO, said in a statement.
Seagen’s acquisition by Pfizer came less than a year after Seagen co-founder and CEO Clay Siegall resigned from the company following allegations of domestic violence, which Siegall denied and did not result in criminal charges. Siegall is now CEO of Seattle-headquartered biotech company Immunome.
Pfizer said it is considering selling the property.
“With this announcement, we will progress the disposition process.”
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