Pfizer Got $160M in Tax Money to Build in Connecticut

(MoneyWatch)  Want Pfizer (PFE) to build a new plant in your town? That could be an expensive date, according to The Day. It cost Connecticut taxpayers $160 million to host the world's largest drug company between 2000 and 2011:

... since 2000, city and state taxpayers have kicked in at least $160 million, through tax breaks, direct grants and infrastructure improvements, to bring Pfizer and its new global research center to a waterfront brownfield -- before the company announced last week that it would pull out in 2011, just when the last of its tax abatements are due to expire.

Those investments included the redevelopment project that would eventually bring New London to national prominence and widespread criticism: the razing and redevelopment of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood that adjoined the brownfield site where Pfizer built its glittering $295 million research headquarters.

Pfizer is now leaving New London to consolidate operations in nearby Groton. "Je ne regrette rien," says New London mayor Rob Pero:

"The city has benefited from having Pfizer in it," incoming Mayor Rob Pero said, including the state's 40-percent share of Pfizer's tax abatement, which was paid to the city, along with the 20 percent paid by the company itself.

"Sixty percent of what we were getting was better than the nothing that was there," Pero said.

Below: Edith Piaf sings a song Pero might like.

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