that which does not kill us
They did it again.

From Pfizer's press release:

"In Research and Development, the company is planning to close three research sites in the United States -- Ann Arbor, MI, Esperion (also in Ann Arbor) and Kalamazoo, MI" but at least the folks in and around K'zoo will still get to enjoy the stench of Pfizer's manufacturing operation, which will remain where it is in Portage.

The departure of what R&D remains in downtown Kalamazoo is dismaying but not, I'm afraid, much of a surprise. A couple of years ago, when their downtown presence was shrinking through the demolition of numerous buildings, I wondered aloud if it wouldn't be better for the company to pull out completely from the central city.

Evidently, we shall see.

In addition to being miserable corporate "citizens" in comparison to Upjohn, the physical presence of Pfizer's facilities has always been bleak and forbidding. Fortresslike windowless buildings and enormous fenced-in surface parking lots only detract from the vitality of a central business district that otherwise has grown stronger every year this decade. Indeed, given that only* 250 jobs are going away, the greatest impact on the downtown will be the blank slate left behind when the closures are completed by the end of 2008.

So the kid in me is weirdly excited. The former Upjohn Co. is as dead as it will ever get, its heart and soul having been decimated in successive waves ever since the mid-1990s and now finally torn out wholesale for reimplantation somewhere else. Who knows where and really, who cares? In its wake, Kalamazoo will have huge swaths of vacant property on the south end of downtown. Pfizer frowns on sharing with others the things it no longer needs, so I predict the demolition of their remaining buildings. My unsolicited advice to the City Commission: a proactive rezoning of all the land. Either target the area for high-density, owner-occupied residential units, or create a framework for something entirely new, a mixed-use urban district comparable to the embryonic redevelopment of the east side riverfront. If the community can avoid excessive handwringing, I believe there lies beneath this latest crisis a genuine opportunity.

* While the loss of 250 jobs is never insignificant, at least Kalamazoo has learned to endure such abuse before, usually on a much larger scale. Ann Arbor's losses are the real stunner here: the entire R&D operation, close to 2,000 jobs spread out over a campus nearly as large as the Portage manufacturing site, is to disappear, also by the close of 2008. I never would have guessed. Bad things don't happen to Ann Arbor.