Industry News

Sovereign Bancorp will open a new Centre Square headquarters and bank branch in Center City, Philadelphia. The 30,000-sf facility will include commercial loan and trust/wealth management operations in the branch. The building will open on August 12th, with the public grand opening celebrated September 23 and 24. Designed by Hillier, the building will house a new bank vault that required the installation of steel support beams.

North Carolina State University has begun site work for the new College of Engineering on its Centennial Campus. Consolidating classrooms scattered in several buildings on the main campus, the facility will house Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Engineering with laboratories, offices, and some shared classroom space. The first $43-million, 152,000-sf phase is slated for completion in June 2004. The second, $45-million phase, encompassing 175,000-sf, is expected to reach completion by June 2005.

Construction services for the first phase of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. will be provided by Centex Construction’s mid-Atlantic division. The center, located underground on the East Front of the Capitol, will require a 196,000-sf excavation and will house 580,000 sf on three levels upon completion in 2005. Centex’s contract is scheduled to be fulfilled by early 2004.  

Avalon Pharmaceuticals, a genomics-based research company, has relocated its headquarters to a 55,000-sf facility in Germantown, Md., featuring expanded research and development capabilities. The headquarters, sited in the Seneca Meadows Corporate Center, should be operational in the first quarter of 2003.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Program is planning to consolidate operations with the construction of a new 65,000-sf headquarters on North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus. The $13.5-million facility will include an outdoor learning laboratory and is expected to begin construction in the fourth quarter of 2002.