Industry News

USA Today, a subsidiary of McLean, Va.-based Gannett, is planning to build an emergency publishing center outside of Washington, D.C. In addition to its alternate Silver Spring data center and publishing site, the project will enable publishing in the event of an area-wide disaster. Current options include the construction or lease of a publishing center removed from the District by more than 100 miles, or the creation of both East and West coast emergency publishing centers. Each center will be staffed by 20-25 employees.

Google, looking to consolidate its work force in a single site, has signed a letter of intent to occupy 190,000-sf in Mountain View, Ca. The 4-year-old company could expand occupancy at the location to 300,000-sf in the future. According to industry sources, Google will lease facilities at the 510,748-sf, four-building Legacy Shoreline Center. The complex is not far from Google's existing Mountain View headquarters.

Comanche County Memorial Hospital and Watkins Hamilton Ross have just begun construction on a four-story Outpatient Center addition to the existing hospital. The project is expected to complete construction in fall 2003. The 124,675-sf building will include an outpatient surgery unit and surgery recovery area with direct access to the hospital's surgery suites. Diagnostic imaging, women's imaging, pre-admit testing, a public education center, and a dedicated sports medicine clinic and orthopedic physicians offices complete the program.

Sitework began in April on phase one of North Carolina State University's Undergraduate Science Teaching Lab (USTL) located on the main campus. 70,700 gsf of instructional chemistry and physics labs and classrooms will be constructed, as well as 40,500 sf of instructional laboratories, classrooms and greenhouses for horticultural sciences. The project, designed by Little and Associates Architects, is being built by contractor R.N. Rouse. Laboratory planner is Research Facilities Design of San Diego.

North Carolina State University is developing the 1,334-acre Centennial Campus in Raleigh, N.C., a mixed-use "technopolis" of university, corporate and government R&D facilities. With 1.3 million sf built in 16 major building modules, the Centennial Campus will also include a town center, business incubators, housing, and an executive conference center and hotel. The campus is comprised of the 1,120-acre Centennial Campus and the 214-acre Centennial Biomedical Campus.