Industry News

Harvard University selected general contractor Lee Kennedy Co. Inc. to manage renovation of 53 Church St., creating a distance learning center and new classrooms. The $3.5-million project involves lifting the two-story historic building from its foundation and realigning the connection to an adjacent building with the addition of a new elevator core. Harvard was prevented from demolishing the original structure by the Cambridge Historical Society.

Dutch firm Qiagen's 200,000-sf Germantown manufacturing facility and U.S. headquarters will be operational in late February 2002 after two years of construction. The biotech firm plans to hire 300 employees, one-third of whom will work in R&D operations and two-thirds in manufacturing. Qiagen Sciences, Qiagen's U.S. subsidiary, makes products and tools for life science research.

Fortress Development has selected RTKL of Baltimore to provide design, master-planning, architecture, engineering, and telecommunications services for its 425-acre Loudoun County data center and office complex. Slated to begin construction in late 2002, the $500-million project, known as CYBERPLEX@DULLES, will feature a 110,000-sf multiple-tenant data center or office building.  

Cell Logic, a biotech startup of Boston venture capital firm Oxford Bioscience Partners, is relocating to Rockville, Md., from Westport, Conn., in spring of 2002. Approved plans to move into the Maryland  Technology Development Center incubator in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Park involve relocation of Cell Logic's single employee, CEO Greg Lennon.

The General Services Administration has selected Southeast Federal Center in D.C. as the site of the Department of Transportation's (DOT)new 1.4-million-sf headquarters, to be located on 11 acres of a 55-acre plot of federal land. Relocation of the DOT's headquarters involves moving 7,500 to 7,900 federal employees.