The University of Michigan announced that, after several months of secret negotiations, it will purchase Pfizer's Ann Arbor, Mich., research facility. Pfizer had planned on closing the facility by the end of 2008, and may have ended up razing the site rather than selling off the buildings piecemeal, so the university is clearly playing the role of white knight. What it gets is 30 buildings and 174 acres of top-notch research facilities into which it can expand, for a fraction of the cost, $108 million, that it would have to spend to create the facilities itself.
The Ann Arbor Business Review offers the best coverage of the deal. The Review's Nathan Bomey analyzes why the university was the only real suitor that made sense for the property.
Michigan grads (myself included) have new reason to feel proud of their alma mater.
--PWT
