Pharma giant to downsize Tampa office space
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Sep 19, 2024

A pharmaceutical giant that made a splashy, incentive-backed entrance to Tampa over 10 years ago plans to slash its office space by more than half.

Bristol Myers Squibb has signed a lease for just under 50,000 square feet in Meridian Three, which is part of the three-building Meridian Center in Tampa’s Westshore business district, the Tampa Bay Business Journal has learned. BMS leaves behind 130,000 square feet on George Road in a suburban office complex near Tampa International Airport.

The company refers to its Tampa office as its North American Capability Center. Jobs there include roles in information technology, marketing services, business and finance services and other functions supporting its U.S. business. The BMS head count in Tampa was expected to reach up to 600 employees when the NACC opened. In 2018, when the company cut its Tampa workforce, there were about 400 employees at the NACC.

Meridian Center is owned by North Carolina-based Highwoods Properties Inc., which negotiates its own deals. BMS was co-represented by Jimmy Garvey of CBRE Group Inc. and Joe Garvey of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. Representatives from Highwoods, BMS, CBRE and Cushman were not immediately available for comment on Thursday.

A hybrid work model, which became standard for most office-based employers after the Covid-19 pandemic, drove the move, a BMS human resources executive wrote on LinkedIn.

“This move isn’t about scaling back our presence but adapting to our hybrid workforce model,” Sean Walkinshaw, global head of HR for BMS, wrote in a LinkedIn post, “where our employees split their time between home and office, on average 50%.”

Johnson & Johnson, which opened a Tampa office around the same time as BMS, cut its office space here by 60% in 2023, moving from the Westshore business district to East Tampa. Pfizer Inc., which opened a Tampa operations center in 2021, leases 105,000 square feet in The Heights, a mixed-use district in downtown Tampa.

An affiliate of Blackstone owns the George Road property, which was fully leased to BMS. The move is a win for Highwoods, which listed Meridian Center for sale in July 2023. At the time, Meridian was facing looming lease obligations that would have left the office complex 60% occupied. Highwoods took the property off the market by late 2023.