Industry News

The University of California, Davis is nearing completion of its new $54.5 million Center for the Arts. The 106,370-sf facility will include a multilevel hall to seat up to 1,800; attic area and catwalks; entrance canopy; lobby; and an attached 250-seat studio theater.

McCormick Theological Seminary has recently completed renovations to two buildings that provide graduate student housing. Knight Advanced Technology of Chicago provided architectural, mechanical, electrical design, and construction administration services for the project--a seven-story, 38,000-sf apartment tower built in the late 1960s, and a four-story, 22,000-sf apartment building built in the late 1920s.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's new medical research building, designed by Lord Aeck & Sargent of Atlanta, will have a nontraditional design, placing desks near windows to take advantage of natural light, and using interior walls for utilities. Newcomb & Boyd of Atlanta is providing mechanical and electrical engineering for the new structure, ensuring ready access to the utilities in the building.

The University of California, San Francisco’s new 43-acre research campus at Mission Bay is under construction. Phase one includes a 385,000-sf research building; a 165,000-sf center for human genetics, developmental biology, and developmental neuroscience; and a campus community center sporting food courts, a health club and pool, and a library—all scheduled to open by 2003. The developer of the huge project is Catellus.

Merix Bioscience Inc. will relocate in summer 2001 from an incubator at Becton Dickinson in Research Triangle Park, N.C., to a 20,000-sf Durham facility, formerly owned by Rhone Poulenc Rorer. Merix plans to conduct clinical trials of its new cancer vaccine at the facility.