Industry News

Anne Arundel Medical Center is planning to break ground on an $8- to $10-million clinical facility on Kent Island, Md., in summer of 2006. The three-story, 40,000-sf building will house primary care services including radiology and laboratory testing and is slated for completion in early 2008. Future plans for the four-acre site include the construction of another single-story 15,000-sf facility.

Oiles America Corp ., a maker of self-lubricating bearings, has recently completed a 32,000-sf expansion of its Concord, N.C., plant. Built by general contractor C.M. Black Construction Co., the $2-million addition will raise employment at the facility to 100 workers. Sited in The International Business Park at Concord, the expansion of Oiles' existing 46,000-sf plant to a footprint of 78,000 sf will enable the company to relocate headquarters operations to the facility from Plymouth, Mich.

Nabi BioPharmaceuticals dedicated its new 12,000-sf vaccine manufacturing facility in Boca Raton, Fla., in June, 2005. Sited at the company's existing headquarters, the $20-million facility will produce StaphVax, a vaccine for the prevention of hospital-born staph infections.

Lucasfilm will begin occupancy of its Letterman Digital Arts Center at the Presidio in San Francisco in early July of 2005. Housing between 1,300 and 1,500 employees, the new Presidio headquarters will allow Lucasfilm to consolidate operations from three San Rafael locations. Lucasfilm spent $350 million on the renovation of the 800,000-sf facility, a former army hospital now reconfigured as four separate buildings. Lucasfilm holds a sixty year lease on the property at approximately $6 million per year.

The University of Chicago will break ground in fall 2005 on its $160-million New Research Building. The ten-story, 300,000-sf facility will provide space for clinical research in the Biological Sciences Division. Additionally, the University of Chicago is nearing completion on the Center for Integrative Science in August 2005.