Industry News

Indian School of Business is under construction in Hyderabad, the "Silicon Valley" of India. The campus encompasses 660,000 sf and is located on 250 acres. Each classroom will be fully wired, with a computer and videoconferencing capability at each desk. The communications network will be set up to ensure instant global connectivity. The school will accommodate a large number of formal and informal break-out spaces. John Portman & Associates designed the school, which will be the first fully air-conditioned school in India.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Oakland Scientific Facility expected to take delivery of a $33 million IBM supercomputer in December 2000. The Oakland facility, a 75,000-sf former Wells Fargo Bank building, has undergone an $11 million retrofit including a new glass facade, seismic upgrades, a new cooling system, and special security devices. The computers will occupy rows of refrigerator-size cabinets that fill the building's first two floors. The project has been developed by Encinal Broadway, headed by Peter Wang.

The Scotts Co., headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, has selected three San Diego companies to provide design, construction management, and general contracting services for a new facility in Temecula. Smith Consulting Architects, Gafcon, and Keeton Construction Co. began work in November 2000 on Scotts Co.'s $22 million, 410,000-sf office/manufacturing/warehouse facility to produce lawn seed and fertilizer spreaders. The company is a leading supplier of consumer gardening products.

Siemens Information and Communication Networks Inc. plans to relocate its Siemens Enterprise Networks Inc. division from Santa Clara, Calif., to the Skyport development under construction at San Jose International Airport. Siemens will move 1,200 employees in fall 2001 into two of three buildings being developed by Spieker Properties Inc. The two towers, providing a total of 370,000 sf, will house Siemen's global development headquarters for voice, data, and Internet applications.

Brocade Communication Systems is expanding operations at the Skyport development at San Jose International Airport. The company, which provides storage area networking infrastructure, will occupy an entire eight-story, 195,000-sf office tower currently under construction. The Brocade building is one of three that Spieker Properties Inc. is developing at the site. A second phase of construction, scheduled to start in two to three years, will include an additional three buildings, for a total of 1.1 million sf of office space.