Merck & Co. Inc. has put up for sale a 154-acre property it owns in Spring House, Pa., that it acquired in 2004 for $45.6 million.

Much of the property at 1201 Sumneytown Pike is undeveloped, but it does have a 157,000-square-foot building on it. Merck occupies roughly 84,000 square feet of the building and the remainder is vacant. Jim Galbally and Brett Grifo of JLL are marketing it for sale, writes Natalie Kostelni for Philadelphia Business Journal. 

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The pharmaceutical company has cut hundreds of jobs locally and thousands across its entire operations over the last few years. Most recently in October, Merck announced plans to eliminate 1,800 exiting sales positions and create 960 new chronic care sales force jobs as part of a major restructuring.

The action did not effect Merck’s main campus in West Point, Pa., where the company has more than 9,000 employees — about 3,000 of whom work in research and another 3,000 in manufacturing. Merck (NYSE: MRK), based in Kenilworth, N.J., has a total of about 68,000 employees.

However, in 2013 Merck indicated that it would eliminate 600 positions at its West Point facility and in 2014, it axed another 500 jobs there.

The property was bought in 2003 by Preferred Real Estate Investments of Conshohocken, Pa., and sold to Merck in 2004 for $45.6 million, according to Montgomery County Property records. The pharmaceutical company, which has operations throughout that part of Montgomery County, bought it for future expansion needs. It is zoned for industrial and manufacturing uses.

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