When “Fast” Fred Hassan was running legacy Schering-Plough (circa 2004-2006), the company spent lavishly on a gleaming HQ in Kenilworth. Then came the Vytorin^® debacle we reprised, below. Merck had to bail its partner Schering out, and merged into it — renaming the final entity Merck again (for what turned out to be ineffectual J&J Remicade^® distribution rights / arbitration moves). So, Hassan was out, and Merck held three very large HQ “white elephant” properties in New Jersey, by late 2010. [And to be sure, Hassan’s Kenilworth palace was the least marketable — and most over priced — of these assets. So surviving Merck moved in, figuring it could more easily sell the others, as mixed use HQ/science facilities.]

Indeed, at one point in 2016-17, Google was a rumored potential buyer of the gorgeous Whitehouse Station campus. But that fell through.

Here over 13 years later, it seems Merck finally has a buyer for Hassan’s Kenilworth palace. And so, Merck has returned to the place George Merck picked out, in the then woods near Rahway, New Jersey about three-quarters of a century ago. All the old buildings have been plussed up, to be sure — but it has. . . returned to “Dad’s” (sorta’ On Walden Pond)… home.

And that, it strikes me, is fitting. Here’s that Saturday “slow news day” story — from FirecePharma, sounding more like a local outlet:

…Three years after Merck & Co. unveiled a headquarters pivot back to its old stomping grounds in Rahway, New Jersey, the company is bidding goodbye to its previous Garden State home base.

Merck has reached a deal with real estate business Onyx Equities to sell its 108-acre campus in Kenilworth, New Jersey, where the drug behemoth relocated its main digs back in 2015. For 23 years before that, Merck was based in nearby Whitehouse Station….

[All as] Merck [departs] Kenilworth in phases. . . [as it now] completes an expansion at its [newly renovated] headquarters in Rahway, the company explained in a release….

Of course, each of these three recent moves had rather significant effects on the local public schools — and so on, since the tax base either shot upward, or dropped off a cliff — as Merck arrived, in full… or decamped. In addition, local lunch spots, gas stations and the like will either proliferate or… die out. Onward, smiling — but now you know.

नमस्ते