Three years after Merck & Co. unveiled a headquarters pivot back to its old stomping grounds in Rahway, New Jersey, the company is bidding goodbye to its previous Garden State home base.
Merck has reached a deal with real estate business Onyx Equities to sell its 108-acre campus in Kenilworth, New Jersey, where the drug behemoth relocated its main digs back in 2015. For 23 years before that, Merck was based in nearby Whitehouse Station.
Merck will move out of Kenilworth in phases over the next “several years” as it completes an expansion at its new headquarters in Rahway, the company explained in a release.
Merck’s sprawling Kenilworth site boasts nearly 2 million square feet of R&D and office space, Onyx noted in its own announcement. The real estate firm plans to keep the Kenilworth site's life sciences pedigree intact, with the goal to market the site’s labs and support facilities to other biopharma and tech companies.
Merck telegraphed its HQ move in 2020, outlining plans to consolidate New Jersey campuses in Rahway—its birthplace—by the end of 2023.
Merck’s history in Rahway—which has “seen the start of many of Merck’s greatest scientific breakthroughs”—dates all the way back to the early 20th century. Around that time, George Merck purchased 120 acres of wooded land where the company established a plant to start manufacturing chemicals.
The company has since completed its move, according to its website.
Merck isn’t the only drugmaker to transplant its corporate nerve center in recent months. Over in North Jersey, Japanese drugmaker Eisai in August inaugurated its new U.S. head office at an old Roche site in Nutley. Sanofi, too, moved on up to a swanky new headquarters in Paris called La Maison Sanofi back in November. The facility is designed around “new hybrid ways of working" and boasts an emphasis on energy efficiency.
GSK has also joined the trend. In December, the British pharma said it was moving to a new global headquarters in central London from its current location in 2024. The site, which will house GSK leaders, R&D staffers and commercial employees, is also being designed around a continued hybrid working model.