Industry News

Carolinas HealthCare System has initiated construction on the 190,000-sf Morehead Medical Plaza. Designed by RTKL of Chicago, the master plan calls for a state-of-the-art outpatient medical campus on a 12-acre site adjacent to Carolina Medical Center in Charlotte. The 6-story medical office building, housing specialty clinics as well as independent physician offices, will be the anchor of the new outpatient care campus. A second outpatient facility will be developed in the future across the landscaped plaza.

Mercedes-Benz U.S. International began construction in February 2005 on a $22.5 million service parts warehouse sited on 44 acres in Vance, Ala. Designed by Designform Inc., the 518,000-sf facility will be constructed by Cooper Construction.

The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute is planning to construct a 35,000-sf patient care facility and adjacent 10,000-sf surgical center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. The project will triple research, patient care, and educational space for the eye institute, which is a unit of the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. The facility will accommodate over 90,000 patient visits annually.

Translational Genomics (TGen) will officially dedicate its new $46 million headquarters on March 22, 2005. Located in Phoenix, Ariz., the TGen headquarters is sited in a 173,000-sf building, the first in a new downtown campus called the Phoenix Bioscience Center at Cooper Square. Other tenants in the building include the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), occupying the entire 23,000-sf second floor, and the International Genomics Consortium (IGC).

Memorial Hospital West has completed a $25-million expansion of its Pembroke Pines, Fla., campus. The project included the creation of a cardiovascular intervention suite, expansion of endoscopy operations from three to five rooms, and the expansion of a surgical sterile processing area. Additionally, pre- and post-procedure areas were combined into one 51-bed unit that acts as a holding area for patients in the morning and a recovery room in the afternoon.