Industry News

Florida photomask maker Photronics will open a new $300-million fabrication center in Shanghai, China. The company also occupies facilities in Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

New York Life Insurance Co. will locate its new $140-million Forsyth County data center in The Meadows 300, a 95,000-sf BellSouth Entertainment unit facility. Slated to begin operations by year-end 2003, the data center will store and handle customer files.

Wyeth Vaccines is planning to lease approximately 82,000 sf of flex space in the Keystone Office and Industrial Park in Durham, N.C. The research laboratory is expected to open in 2003 and will house up to 100 researchers. Wyeth is continuing to develop its 472,000-sf Sanford campus, where it completed a 115,000-sf manufacturing expansion in December 2002. A 50,000-sf addition to the expansion is currently under way. Wyeth Vaccines is a business unit of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a division of Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has selected the New England Division of Skanska USA Building as program manager for the redevelopment of the Quissett Campus in Woods Hole, Mass. The project includes a new biogeochemistry laboratory building, a marine research laboratory facility, upgrades to the campus central plant, and alterations to the process and septic systems for the campus. The laboratory buildings are scheduled to begin construction in late 2003, pending regulatory approval.

The D.C. Department of Health’s Emergency Health and Medical Services Administration is planning a mobile medical unit to provide surge capacity including triage, decontamination, and vaccination in the event of a crisis. The mobile facility will be comprised of two core parts. A hard shell component, similar to a trailer, will carry eight critical care beds and be hauled by an 18-wheel truck. A soft-shell component that can be pulled by a pickup truck will fold out into four individual climate-controlled tents housing eight to ten beds each.