A big-name investment group with plans for a business park has snapped up 76.6 acres next to the future Covance site.
City officials say the land deal at Queen Creek and Gilbert roads, made public last week, is a sign that the drug development giant is attracting national interest - and investment dollars - to Chandler.
The buyer is Rockefeller Group Development Corp., once controlled by the well-known New York political family that included former U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Now owned by Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Estate Co., the buyer paid $21.4 million cash for the site under the name Rock-Queen Creek, LLC. This is the group's first buy in the Phoenix area, spokesman Brian Mahoney said.
Sellers were family members of the late Henry Pylman, a dairy farmer and land speculator in the Valley since 1965. "This is a very large acquisition and a significant one for Chandler," said Christine Mackay, economic development specialist.
And it's just the beginning, Mayor Boyd Dunn said. "We are hearing a lot of inquiries from companies that want to locate next to Covance, and we are very excited about these inquiries," he said.
The buyers plan to build nearly a million square feet of industrial and office space that will be ready in 2008, said Paul Sieczkowski, one of the deal's brokers. Unlike the Covance site, which was already zoned for industrial development, this land is designated as agricultural and must be rezoned before construction can start. No zoning application has been filed, city records show.
"My father's philosophy was to build a dairy in the path of growth, and hopefully growth comes and then he would sell to a developer," said Martin Pylman, a Tempe land broker and member of the selling family. The site never contained a dairy but was used to grow alfalfa.
At $6.50 a square foot and with frontage on Queen Creek Road, the price was less than the $11.68 Covance paid for its 50-acre site to the north, Sieczkowski said. He said Covance may have been willing to pay more because that site already had industrial zoning.
Covance had previously planned to build on 38 acres on Price Road, but the site required rezoning and opponents had threatened a referendum. The most vocal have been animal rights activists who object to the company's treatment of animals used in drug tests.
Camilla Strongin, Phoenix spokeswoman for Covance, said it's still too early to know if the Rockefeller development will be home to bioscience companies that use Covance's services. However, she and Mackay say interest in Chandler land from a company like the Rockefeller group would likely never happen had Covance not decided to build there.
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