Energy

The Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative Inc. (GVEC) is building a Lineman's Training Facility on 11 acres of company-owned land in Gonzales. The Texas Electric Cooperatives, an Austin trade association, has partnered with GVEC to share building costs. The facility, slated for completion in August, is GVEC's third Texas site where journeyman linemen can benefit from educational programs and safety training. The first training facility opened in Levelland in 2001; GVEC is now building a Northeast Texas training facility in Henderson.

The Lower Colorado River Authority is planning to upgrade the 30-year-old Dalchau Service Center. Located in Southeast Austin, the transmission services center currently houses 180 to 240 employees who maintain and build power transmission lines. The $43-million expansion project will remodel the center to accommodate current and future growth. Four separate facilities will be upgraded and converted into a single 260-desk facility, housing additional offices and a conference center.

Progress Energy is planning to lease over 450,000 sf in two new office towers to be developed in downtown Raleigh in order to consolidate operations currently scattered in 250,000 sf across Raleigh. The towers, which may rise as high as 18 to 20 stories each, will be located on a two-acre site adjacent to Progress's current 21-story, 250,000-sf office. Progress, providing only the land and the lease guarantee, has issued a request for proposals to 14 development companies and plans to make a selection in April 2002.

Oil refiner Valero Energy Corp. has contracted SpawGlass Contractors of San Antonio to build its new headquarters on the existing 148-acre Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. campus recently acquired by Valero.

Valero Energy Corp. has selected SpawGlass Contractors of San Antonio to build its new headquarters at the 148-acre campus of Ultramar Diamond Shamrock (UDS), recently acquired by Valero. The 200,000- to 300,000-sf office structure will consolidate Valero’s operations. Plans for the company’s existing two-building, 260,000-sf headquarters in North San Antonio are uncertain. Existing buildings at the UDS site include a headquarters (225,000 sf) and an annex (20,000 sf); both buildings, as well as the existing Valero headquarters, are full to capacity.

DFI Group Inc., a commercial and industrial developer, is considering a site in the Charlotte, N.C., area to build an ethanol R&D center. An existing building in Monroe is under consideration. A section of the multimillion-dollar facility would be designed to produce 3 million gallons of ethanol annually. DFI Construction Inc., formed this year, supports the company’s industrial project construction needs in the Southeast.

PPL Corp., a Pennsylvania energy company, plans to locate its Energy Plus division  adjacent to its headquarters in Allentown. Liberty Property Trust will convert a former department store site into a six- or seven-story building; PPL will occupy 170,000 sf of the facility. Liberty has selected Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York to design the building, with groundbreaking possible in early 2002, and completion in spring 2003. PPL plans to build a 1,000-vehicle parking deck nearby.

Siemens Westinghouse Power Corp. is considering the Alliance industrial park in Fort Worth as the home for its stationary-fuel-cells division. The $125 million, 500-employee manufacturing plant would initially consist of office space (35,000 sf) and manufacturing space (180,000 sf), with a possible expansion of the office space to 70,000 sf and the manufacturing space to 430,0000 sf in the next four years. Other potential sites include Orlando, Fla. and Pittsburgh.

Siemens Westinghouse Power Corp. is considering locating a $125-million manufacturing plant in the 9,600-acre Alliance industrial park in Fort Worth. Developed by Ross Perot Jr.'s Hillwood venture, the site would house 180,000-sf of manufacturing and 35,000-sf of office space for Siemens' new stationary fuel cells division. Employing up to 500 workers initially, the plant could eventually expand to 430,000 sf of manufacturing and 70,000 sf of office space in the next three or four years. Other potential sites include Orlando, Fla. and Pittsburgh, Pa.

Duke Energy Corp. is planning to develop one of Charlotte's tallest office towers, possibly standing over 40 floors. Costing up to $200 million and encompassing up to 1,000,000 sf, the uptown tower may be formally announced in August. Additional tenants may lease a significant amount of square footage in the building.

PG&E National Energy Group's plan to relocate 650 employees from Bethesda to the Tower Oaks in Rockville has been put on hold due to Pacific Gas & Electric's energy problems in California. Although financed separately from Pacific Gas & Electric, PG&E National Energy Group's 450,000-sf project, which was planned for completion by late 2001, probably will not be completed until summer 2002 due to creditor hesitancy. When built, the complex could accommodate as many as 1,000 employees.

Detroit-based HarleyEllis broke ground on Detroit Edison's Fermi 2 Nuclear Training Center in April 2001. Located at the Fermi 2 Power Plant in Newport, the $10 million building will provide hands-on large equipment training as well as consolidating existing training facilities. The development encompasses 60,000-sf of conference and training space. The first floor is dedicated to classroom space and nuclear power vocational training with electrical, mechanical, and large-scale simulation labs and classrooms.

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), pressured by California's high real estate prices, is expanding instead in Charlotte, rather than in Palo Alto, Calif., where the institute is headquartered. The new $5 million building will be constructed at the 10-acre site where EPRI's current 102,000-sf operations are located. The new 50,000-sf structure will accommodate traditional office functions, freeing up space in the existing building for more research and laboratories.