Specialty pharmacy employing 31 people to open in DeWitt

A new specialty pharmacy service is setting up shop at a former General Electric building in DeWitt.

Noble Health Associates LLC, a newly created subsidiary of Gouverneur-based Kinney Drugs Inc., plans to open a mail-order pharmaceutical business at 6040 Tarbell Road.

Michael Becker, director of specialty pharmacy for Noble Health, said the company plans to open the business in the spring or summer. It will employ 31 people, with salaries averaging $54,000, he said. The jobs will be pharmacists, pharmacists technicians and administrators, he said.

Becker said the company chose the location because the Syracuse area has colleges that produce the skilled workers that it will need.

Kinney Drugs operates a chain of drug stores. Its new subsidiary will dispense, by mail, life-saving specialty drugs for diseases such as AIDS, he said. Some cost thousands of dollars a dose, so Noble Health will work with manufacturers and others to try to make the drugs affordable for those who need them, he said.

The facility in DeWitt will process orders, package the drugs and ship them. Noble will serve customers throughout the country, Becker said.

Kinney is joining other drug store chains, including CVS and Walgreens, in operating a specialty pharmacy.

We feel we have an opportunity to tap into this market, which is exploding right now, said Becker.

Noble Health will lease 16,800 square feet of the buildings 60,530-square-foot building. Developer Peter Muserlian, whose Tarbell Road Associates LLC owns the building, said it was last used as a check processing center by JP Morgan Chase & Co. and has been vacant for about four years.

Muserlian has applied to the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency for exemptions from sales taxes on construction materials and from the mortgage recording tax. The sales tax exemption would be worth an estimated $72,000 and the mortgage recording tax exemption would be worth an estimated $20,000. The agency will hold a public hearing on the application in February.

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Specialty pharmacy employing 31 people to open in DeWitt