Industry News

Contract packaging company Wilpak Inc. is consolidating three smaller plants with the lease of 211,000-sf in AMB Property Corp.'s 370,000-sf Southfield Logistics Center. The Clayton County space, vacated by DSC Logistics, was slated for occupancy October 1 and will replace Wilpak's 66,000-sf Southeast Atlanta Industrial park facility, 50,000 sf in the Atlanta's Empire Industrial Park, and an 82,000 sf Atlanta facility.

Middlebury College of Vermont is building a new 143,000-sf library featuring environmentally-friendly and locally produced materials. Lee Kennedy Co. of Boston provided pre-construction services, now complete, for the project and has now initiated construction. Architects Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects LLC designed the library.

Catholic University of America is building the $26.5 million Edward J. Pryzbyla University Center, a three-story, 102,000-sf, T-shaped structure dubbed the “living room of the university." Housing a bookstore, student center, ballroom, six meeting rooms, campus offices, and a convenience store, the facility is being built by Clark Construction of Bethesda, Md. Construction began in October 2001 and is slated for completion in January 2003. The center will unite the existing three dining rooms on campus into one facility.  

Versicor, a Fremont, Calif.-based drug developer, will relocate its headquarters to Philadelphia where its clinical development operations are based. Versicor develops drugs for the hospital market which fight difficult-to-treat infections.

The $30-million Lockheed Martin Mississippi Space & Technology Center is being developed by a partnership of Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the State of Mississippi. Located at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi, the 220,000-sf facility will create an estimated 270 jobs. The project is being funded by $30 million in state and county funds and an additional $30 million from Lockheed Martin.