Industry News

The Bisys Group, based in Little Falls, N.J., will relocate its planned services office from Ambler, Penn., to 171,500 sf of space at the Montgomery Corporate Center, a new 1.1-million-sf four-building Class A corporate complex in eastern Montgomery County. Groundbreaking for the Bisys space is scheduled for March 2001, with move-in planned for March 2002. Bisys will consolidate 425 employees from Ambler with 175 from Fort Washington at the new site, which can accommodate up to 1,000 employees. Developer of the project is SJP Properties of Parsippany, N.J.

MedImmune, based in Gaithersburg, Md., plans to select a site in Montgomery County for its new $60 million, 210,000-sf biotechnology headquarters. Phase I of the project includes construction of two buildings in a campus-style setting. The company will relocate its headquarters to the new building when construction is completed in 2002.

Life Technologies, recently purchased by Invitrogen of San Diego, will see 400 employees relocated from Rockville's Shadey Grove Life Sciences Center to a new three-building campus on 15 to 20 acres in Frederick, where Invitrogen will centralize its U.S. distribution services. The site provides approximately 175,000 sf of manufacturing, distribution, and some R&D space, and a 50,000-sf warehouse that will be renovated. Plans may include construction of a new facility for expanded R&D services at the site.

Millennium Pharmaceuticals has opened a 200,000-sf addition to its headquarters in University Park, a 2.3 million-sf park in Cambridge. Over the next few years, the biotech company plas to construct an additional 212,000 sf, which will bring Millennium's presence to a total of 673,000 sf at the park.

Georgia State University opened a biotechnology R&D center called CollabTech in November 2000. The incubator, funded partially by the Georgia Research Alliance and with support from the Advanced Technology Development Center, is aimed at providing access to the most advanced equipment for biotechnology start-ups, as well as enabling the university and its students to participate in cutting-edge research and discoveries. The University of Georgia plans to open an agricultural biology research center, called AgTech, in March 2001.