Alexion Moving To New Haven, Adding Up To 300 Jobs

NEW HAVEN Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc., a fast-growing company whose stock price has soared over the past five years, is returning to New Haven from Cheshire and adding hundreds of jobs, and promises to grow its workforce sharply in the next five years.

In exchange for moving more than 350 people now in Cheshire and adding between 200 and 300 employees by 2017, Alexion will be eligible for a state package worth up to $51 million in tax credits, a grant and a loan that will be partially or fully forgivable, depending on the hiring numbers.

Alexion will move into a new headquarters at a key location in the Elm City, near Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale School of Medicine, on College Street, on land now occupied by a below-grade highway spur.

A 426,000 square-foot building with street-level retail and a parking garage of at least 600 spaces, costing approximately $100 million, would open in June 2015 under the agreement. The developer is Winstanley Enterprises, whose largest office is across the street.

With Tuesday's announcement, Alexion becomes the fourth company in the governor's Governor Dannel P. Malloy's First Five program, designed to give large aid packages to businesses adding at least 200 jobs and it becomes a linchpin in New Haven Mayor John DeStefano's plans to redevelop the medical center area in a pedestrian-friendly way.

It is also part of the state's push to support the biotech industry, which Malloy is making into a signature issue. Alexion has entered the market with one drug so far, developed through biologics rather than chemicals, and has a pipeline of five other drug candidates, all designed to treat ultra-rare, life-threatening diseases.

"We need to build an industry we already have a foothold in," Malloy said Tuesday morning, as he announced Alexion's move and expansion.

Alexion was founded in New Haven's Science Park development 20 years ago by Dr. Leonard Bell, a Yale medical professor who is still the company's CEO. The company went public in 1997, and moved to Cheshire in 2000.

It is outgrowing its three buildings in Cheshire, even after repeated additions. In the past five years, it has added about 150 workers there.

Bell, who graduated from Yale's medical school and lives in Woodbridge, said: "Moving here to New Haven is like a homecoming."

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Alexion Moving To New Haven, Adding Up To 300 Jobs