Industry News

Verizon Communications has awarded Skanska USA Building the construction management services assignment to renovate seven four-story buildings on a 135-acre campus in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The 1.3 million-sf complex, formerly occupied by AT&T, will house the leadership teams for Verizon's Domestic Telecom and International units. Construction on the $98-million project has begun. The project involves interior and exterior renovations, as well as numerous mechanical plant upgrades.

Genzyme Corp. broke ground on a 177,000-sf research facility in Framingham, Mass., on October 5, 2005. The $124-million project consists of a six-story research building and a separate utilities facility that will provide services to it and three other Genzyme buildings in Framingham. The research facility will feature a six-story atrium with offices and labs designed to promote collaboration and interaction.

Cisco Systems is developing the 37,000-sf Education and Development Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Located in Cisco's Building 11, the employee training center will cost between $1 million and $2 million to construct. Featuring classrooms, video rooms, laboratory space, and lounges, the facility will train approximately 2,000 Cisco employees annually.

Construction of two new laboratories and a central energy plant upgrade for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is nearing completion on its Quisset Campus in Woods Hole, Mass. One laboratory, the 32,000-sf marine research facility, was constructed primarily for researchers to study marine mammals and their environment. The second new building is a 35,000-sf biogeochemistry laboratory to study organic materials in the marine environment. The two laboratories increase the Institution's scientific research space by more than 20 percent.

Brookhaven National Laboratory celebrated the groundbreaking of the 94,500-sf Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) in Upton, N.Y., in October of 2005. Designed by HDR Architecture of Alexandria, Va., and constructed by E.W. Howell Co. of Woodbury, N.Y., the $81-million CFN is one of five Nanoscale Science Research Centers to be constructed at Department of Energy national laboratories. The construction cost of the facility is $38 million.