Industry News

West Virginia University dedicated the $43 million Biomedical Research Center and the $17.5 million Health Sciences Learning Center in Morgantown in August of 2008. The four-story, 120,000-sf Biomedical Research Center houses the Multiple Sclerosis and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Center, the Sensory Neurosciences Research Center, and other biomedical research facilities.

Children's Hospital of Orange County has selected Jacobs Engineering Group as construction manager for its new 424,300-sf patient tower in Orange, Calif. The tower will be constructed in phases through 2020 for a total future bed count of 380. The project will include renovation of the existing hospital campus and central plant.

Pfizer will open the 105,000-sf Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center (BBC) in San Francisco’s Mission Bay development in 2010. Located adjacent to the University of California, San Francisco's Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) research facility, the leased five-story building will enable Pfizer to pursue collaborative research with academic and industry partners. The project developer is Alexandria Real Estate Equities. Pfizer may lease an additional 50,000-sf in another wing of the building.

Charles Stark Draper Laboratory is planning to create a bioMEMS research and development center at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The facility will support research in microelectromechancial systems for biomedical applications in partnership with USF and its medical school. Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, based in Cambridge, Mass., will also construct a production center in St. Petersburg for the manufacture of multi-chip modules combining multiple integrated circuits on a single chip.

The University of Toledo is planning to construct a $30 million facility for the College of Pharmacy in Toledo, Ohio. Sited on the university’s health sciences campus, the 54,000-sf project is slated for completion in mid-2010.