Skokie assesses Pfizer fallout Closings to hurt taxes, businesses

By Susan Kuczka
Tribune staff reporter
Published May 1, 2003

From Village Hall to the corner restaurant, shock waves rippled across Skokie on Wednesday as public officials and business owners tried to gauge the financial fallout after the community's largest employer announced it will close its local facilities.

"This will be a big hit for me--big time," said Argie Varvouletos, owner of Annie's Pancake House, 4900 Oakton St., a favorite lunch spot for some of the workers at Pfizer's downtown Skokie facility.

The New York-based pharmaceutical company announced Tuesday that it plans to close within 18 months the nearly century-old Skokie facility and a second one on Old Orchard Road near the Edens Expressway. Pfizer acquired the facilities two weeks ago when it purchased another pharmaceuticals giant, Pharmacia Corp., for $60 billion.

G.D. Searle & Co. owned the downtown plant until 1985, when Monsanto Co. purchased it. It was sold three years ago to Pharmacia Corp.

An estimated 1,100 jobs in Skokie and 400 jobs in Mt. Prospect and Elk Grove Village will be lost as a result of Pfizer's decision to close its Chicago-area operations in a cost-cutting measure.

But Skokie will take the biggest financial hit.

The Pfizer facilities paid an estimated $3 million annually in property taxes to local school, park and library districts and the village budget.

"It's going to have an impact on all of the districts that are dependent on their property taxes," said Mayor George Van Dusen.

About $300,000 of Pfizer's tax bill went into the village's estimated $75 million annual operating budget. Making up that money will not be easy, especially in a slow economy, officials said.

"I don't think the tax implications for the village will be huge, but it will have an impact," Van Dusen said.

The school districts, the biggest tax beneficiaries, will have a more difficult time. About 60 percent of Pfizer's taxes went to the village's six elementary school districts and high school district, officials said.

At Skokie Elementary School District 69, Pfizer was the largest taxpayer toward an estimated $14 million budget already strained by declining state aid.

James Gustafson, business manager for the 1,200-pupil district, estimated the financial hit to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Elsewhere, school district officials said they were reviewing records to determine the financial impact.

"It's going to be dramatic," said Beth Millard, assistant superintendent for business of Skokie Elementary School District 68, which received about $600,000 annually in Pfizer tax payments to fund its $25 million operating budget.

The Skokie Park District received about $220,000 in taxes from the company to fund its programs, 35 percent of which are supported by taxes. The rest of the district's $21 million budget primarily comes from user fees, said Steve Hartman, the district's executive director.

Pfizer also plans to offer jobs to many Chicago-area employees at locations outside Illinois.

"We recognize there's a tremendous amount of experience and talent, and we want to retain as many of those employees as we can," said Mariann Caprino, a company spokeswoman.

That was welcome news to Varvouletos, the restaurant owner, who knows many of the downtown plant's employees by name.

"I'll be sorry to see them go, but I hope they find new jobs," she said.