Former Merck Memphis Facility Is Back On The Market...

The Jackson Avenue facility is yet another 1 million square foot, 43 acre R&D and office site. I say another, because Merck still holds the Whitehouse Station, 1.1 million square foot, 44 acre facility in New Jersey.

Jones Lang LaSalle (which was in January 2014 hired to sell Merck's legacy Schering-Plough Summit, NJ Morris Avenue facility -- also nearly a million square feet, sold in Fall 2015 to Celgene -- and there is also this one, still largely vacant) is the retained broker, in Memphis. Do see the comments to this post, for more useful backgrounders, below. [H/T, Anon.!]

To be clear, the Memphis facility is believed presently owned by Bayer (though I've always wondered about some reversionary interest in Merck's hands), as a by-product of the Consumer Health deal with Merck in 2014-15. [I've never been able to confirm that Merck has any ongoing obligation, in Memphis.]

Here's the local overnight news item -- off of Beale Street:

. . . .The 43-acre property includes about 1 million square feet of space, including 550,000 square feet of warehouse space, 310,000 square feet of office space, a tier-one data center and a childcare facility, according to a marketing brochure from JLL. . . .

I guess I've decided to highlight it this morning -- to suggest that there are a number of these massive formerly pill-pharma facilities on market -- and not selling. I'll resist the urge to call them gray (nearly white) elephants, but my estimation is that despite what 45 tells his base, these old line powder pill jobs are gone for good (at least 5,000 per facility). And retooling such a behemoth into a series of smaller tech incubators is a serious capital investment. Now you know. Onward -- buoyed, with hope -- just the same. . . .

नमस्ते