Industry News

Unilin Flooring broke ground in June 2004 on a 600,000-sf manufacturing plant in Thomasville, N.C. The $8 million plant is expected to reach completion by spring 2005 and will employ 330 workers. Unilin Flooring produces Quick-Step laminate flooring.

Hershey Foods has completed a 1.1 million-sf distribution center in Edwardsville, Ill. Located in the Gateway Commerce Center, the facility includes a two-story, 19,000-sf office area. The exterior of the building uses insulated metal panels allowing a 60 degree temperature in the interior, which features a special concrete floor constructed to handle the loads required by Hershey’s storage needs. The project contractor was Korte Co. of  St. Louis.

Owens-Illinois broke ground on a 450,000-sf glass manufacturing plant in Windsor, Colo., in early June 2004. The $119-million plant will manufacture about 1 billion bottles annually for the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Fort Collins.

Midstate Electric Cooperative broke ground in June 2004 on its new 55,000-sf LaPine, Ore., campus. Designed by Bend-based Steele Associates Architects and constructed by R&H Construction, a firm with offices in Portland and Bend, the facility will be the first LEED™-certified building in Central Oregon. The project will feature insulated concrete form exterior walls, low VOC-emitting finish materials, ground source heat pumps, construction waste reduction and recycling, automated HVAC systems, natural day-lighting, and the use of recycled content building materials.

Kaiser Permanente opened a new 50,000-sf clinical laboratory in Richmond , Calif., in April 2004. Augmenting an existing 100,000-sf laboratory in Berkeley , the high technology facility will handle 25,000 lab specimens daily, including immunohematology, toxicology, immunochemistry, automated chemistry, hematology, and coagulation. Kaiser’s Richmond campus currently houses a training facility for allied health sciences and an optical lab.