Industry News

Lehigh University is planning to build a $100 million facility for the College of Health in Bethlehem, Pa. Designed by Wilson HGA, the five-story, 190,000-gsf facility will promote interdisciplinary education and research by collocating programs in health, science, and technology. Featuring a transparent design with minimal hard walls, the project will offer open labs and learning studios to enhance collaboration and interaction.

Fujifilm Electronic Materials broke ground in March of 2019 on an 85,000-sf expansion of its Mesa campus. The project will provide five new buildings for research, development, manufacturing, warehousing, and administration. Completion is expected in early 2020. Fujifilm is investing $91 million over several years to expand its operations in Arizona and Rhode Island to meet a growing global demand for high purity electronic chemicals.

Virginia Tech is planning to begin construction in mid-2020 on the $250 million Global Business and Analytics Complex in Blacksburg. Accommodating programs for the Pamplin College of Business, the four-building complex will include two 100,000-sf academic buildings providing collaborative research spaces, interactive classrooms, offices, labs, and high-performance computational suites for data analysis and interpretation. The transdisciplinary project will also include two residential buildings that will act as living-learning communities for approximately 700 students.

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center opened the $22.3 million Academic Classroom Building in Odessa in February of 2019. Designed to promote active learning, the two-story, 51,000-sf facility provides studio classrooms, lecture halls, physical and occupational therapy training labs, research labs, and departmental offices for the schools of medicine, nursing, and health professions.

Amicus Therapeutics is creating the Global Research and Gene Therapy Center of Excellence in Philadelphia. The 75,000-sf facility will provide collaborative laboratories and offices for the discovery and development of treatments for rare metabolic diseases. Accommodating up to 200 employees, the center will serve as the headquarters for the global Amicus science organization and the gene therapy division’s leadership team. Occupancy is expected in the second half of 2019.