NJ Pursuing Smaller Roche Center Amid Big Job Cuts

The Christie administration says it is hoping to persuade drugmaker Roche Holding to bring to New Jersey a planned new research center employing close to 250.

Roche announced Tuesday it will end operations in Nutley by the end of 2013, eliminating 1,000 jobs. But the company also plans to locate a smaller research center, employing about 240, somewhere on the East Coast.

A spokesman for Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno says the state will try to get Roche to build that new center in New Jersey.

The administration says Roche's decision is no reflection on New Jersey's business climate.

The company says it no longer had enough critical mass left at the complex in Nutley and neighboring Clifton to keep it as a research site. The facility once employed 10,000.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)