Council planners have given the go-ahead for the rolling redevelopment of the former European headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Developer Discovery Park Ltd (DPL) bought the 180-acre site — just north of Sandwich in Kent — when Pfizer vacated in 2011. After renaming the site “Discovery Park” it submitted an office-led enlargement scheme to Dover District Council in January.
As part of its master plan, DPL wants to demolish some of the remaining offices, laboratories and warehouses on the site. The remaining 1.7-million sq ft of business floorspace would then be changed to general industrial, storage and distribution use with the addition of almost 1.3-million sq ft of new general industrial and storage floorspace.
The authority has now granted outline consent for the expansion project which also includes a 200-bedroom hotel, 11,000 sq ft of shops, a multi-storey car park and around 500 “affordable” new homes.
According to a report prepared for a special meeting of the council’s planning committee, the site is already earmarked in the core strategy local plan core as a location for “employment allocation”. There was no official allocation, under any planning strategy, for houses on the site.
The report added that “the importance of securing the long-term commercial future of this site, in this instance, outweighs the dis-benefit of this lack of affordable housing provision”.
Discovery Park is already home to a range of international companies and organisations capitalising on the site’s 50-year pharmaceutical heritage. It currently has 100 separate businesses, employing over 1,600 people, from established organisations to emerging start-ups. And with around 1.5-million sq ft of offices and high-tech facilities up and running it is one of the largest research and development clusters in Europe.
Already granted enterprise zone status, the park was this summer awarded £6.05m of Government cash toward the refurbishment and fitting out of three empty Pfizer buildings. It replied by pledging to increase the park’s job count to 3,000 by 2017.
“Once completed, the buildings will offer a range of offices and labs, conference space and meeting rooms. This investment in Discovery Park will particularly allow us to address demand in a growing life sciences sector,” said Discovery Park managing director, Paul Barber.
At the time, Locate in Kent chief executive, Paul Wookey, commented: “We are dealing with an increasing number of life science companies wanting to join the life sciences cluster in Kent and looking for quality laboratory space.
“It is great that the Government is going to help Discovery Park fund the refurbishment of the former Pfizer laboratories so that a number of companies can benefit and bring their businesses and related jobs to Kent.”
