Industry News

Durham-based USA Baseball , the trainer of the U.S. Olympic baseball team, will construct a $10.8-million National Training Center on 127 acres in Thomas Brooks Park in Cary, N.C. The contractor for the project, T.A. Loving of Goldsboro, will complete construction of the facility by summer of 2007. The center will be comprised of one signature field, three training fields, and retail space. Heery International of Atlanta is leading the project team, with Mulkey Inc.

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.