Industry News

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.

Calibre Systems has selected Dietze Construction Group to complete the interior build-out of its new 80,000-sf office. The Smith Group designed the office for the defense contractor, which is scheduled for completion in spring 2001. The facility will be part of Metro Park in Alexandria, a 1 million-sf office park of five-, six-, and 10-story office buildings being developed by Fried Cos.

MassTech Center LLC is a proposing to build a 3.7-million sf technology office park in Eastern Massachusetts at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station. If approved by the South Shore Tri-Town Development Corp., the Hingham, Mass.-based company would proceed with a staged development of the project over an eight to ten-year period.

Zygo TeraOptix Inc., based in Holliston, Mass., has a $9 million renovation and expansion under way in Westborough at a newly purchased 87,000-sf facility. A 33,500 sf expansion will create a new floor within one section of the structure that has 50-ft-high ceilings, bringing the total space available to 120,000 sf. Employees will begin occupying approximately 30,000 sf of the building in December 2000, while renovations to the electrical and HVAC systems are ongoing.