Industry News

 North Carolina State University is planning a $65-million, 250-room hotel, conference center and golf course at its Centennial Campus to enhance research and academic programs at the University. The school has filed papers to form a charitable organization, the N.C. State Conference Center LLC, which would enable the center to operate free of state and federal income taxes. Hines Interests of Chicago is providing construction consultation on the project, which is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2004.

 Plans for the Silver Spring Innovation Center business incubator are being developed by Montgomery County and developer JBG Cos. Housing up to 15 young bioinformatics and information technology companies, the 12,000-sf facility is slated to open in 2003. The incubator is part of a larger mixed-use residential and commercial development including approximately 100,000 sf on the 3-acre site, possibly as a multi-floor facility.

 EI Inc., formerly Environmental Investigations, is relocating its Durham, N.C., headquarters to a new office facility under construction in Cary. The environmental and safety consulting firm will occupy half of the Devon Building's 2600 sf. Designed by Michael Hining Architects and built by general contractor Resolute Building Inc., the structure is developed by EI in partnership with Durham-based real estate developer Zapolski+Rudd. EI's Training and Compliance Center will be housed in the facility's large conference room accommodating up to 30 students.

Burlington County's Virtua Memorial Hospital has completed its new $19.6-million expansion and renovation project initiated in December of 1999. The 45,000-sf addition provides space for new operating rooms including a 26-bed critical-care unit and a cardiac-catheterization suite. Oversized operating rooms have the capacity to support advanced neurosurgical and orthopedic equipment. In the existing hospital building, 15,000 sf of space was renovated to expand the lobby and house a conference center, cafe, and gift shop.

Emory University has opened the new $81.3-million Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, an eight-floor structure housing 150 faculty offices and 150 labs in an open-lab design equipped with advanced automated and robotic equipment for rapid DNA analysis. A below-ground 50,000-sf facility houses rodent research. The new 325,000-sf research building accommodates the Center for Medical Genomics, the Neurodegenerative Disease Center, and Emory’s departments of cell biology, and human genetics and physiology.