Wednesday, January 13, 2021

C&EN: DuPont to sell Chestnut Run laboratories

In this week's C&EN, this news from Craig Bettenhausen: 
DuPont has signed a letter of intent to sell its 74,000 m2 Chestnut Run lab campus in Wilmington, Delaware, to MRA Group, a science-focused real estate development firm. The companies did not disclose financial details.

DuPont will lease several lab buildings at the site from MRA, which plans to convert Chestnut Run into a tech hub emphasizing chemistry, life sciences, and advanced materials. DuPont will retain its adjacent office space, home of the firm’s corporate headquarters since it moved from downtown Wilmington in 2014...

...A former DuPont site in Wilmington is being redeveloped as Barley Mill Plaza, a 56,000 m2 mixed-use facility. DuPont says extensive restructuring in recent years has left it with empty labs and offices in Wilmington. The firm employed around 3,000 people in Delaware in 2020, down from 7,000 in late 2015, according to IndustryWeek.
It would be interesting to know how many of these research site conversions end up generating more and better jobs than the original site, in terms of the number of positions and the quality of the wages. I'm skeptical, but it would be great to see the numbers. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20