Information Technology

China-based Lenovo, the world's third largest maker of personal computers, will invest $84 million to construct a campus in Morrisville, N.C. The three-building, 500,000-sf Innovation Center will be located in the Perimeter Park corporate development. Building One will be a 179,000-sf, five-story research center. Building Two, mirroring the footprint of Building One, will begin construction in March 2006 and reach completion in early 2007. The 143,000-sf, four-story Building Three will begin construction in January 2008 and reach completion in January 2009.

Cisco Systems is developing the 37,000-sf Education and Development Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Located in Cisco's Building 11, the employee training center will cost between $1 million and $2 million to construct. Featuring classrooms, video rooms, laboratory space, and lounges, the facility will train approximately 2,000 Cisco employees annually.

Hewlett Packard Co. has expanded its presence in Memphis, Tenn., with the lease of the 789,000-sf Summit Distribution Center II. The facility will accommodate distribution operations for HP's imaging and printing businesses. Operations at the Memphis facility will be filled by Menlo Worldwide, a third-party supplier. The facility is expected to become operational in fall 2005.

Dell will celebrated the ground-breaking of its new 500,000-sf manufacturing plant in southeast Winston-Salem on February 23, 2005. The $115 million facility will be sited in the Alliance Science & Technology Park.

Texas-based Dell Inc. has awarded the site grading contract for its new 500,000-sf computer manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., to Blythe Development.  Construction is expected to begin by the end of January 2005.

Little Rock, Ark.-based Acxiom Corp . opened its new 98,000-sf office complex in Phoenix in early November 2004. The $31-million facility features an 8,000-sf data center, a wellness center, a dining room, an executive briefing center, and outdoor basketball and volleyball courts. The facility is sited on 17.5 acres of land; 2.2 acres of the site have been allocated for future development. The complex will accommodate client support and business growth for Acxiom, a database management and information technology company.

TTM Technologies will expand its Chippewa Falls, Wis., operations with the construction of a $10- million, 44,000-sf factory area. TTM, a manufacturer of circuit boards, could expand its production capacity up to 85 percent with the new facility.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp. opened its $13.7 million Information Technology Innovation Center in Folsom, Calif. in February 2004. The goal of the 5,000-sf showroom is to boost market demand and stimulate research and development innovation. The center features a large reception area and meeting space, a digital home display, a digital office display, a mobility bar, a rear teleconferencing room, and a disruptive technology lab.

Maxim Integrated Products has purchased a San Antonio warehouse formerly occupied by Phillips Semiconductors for $40 million. The 330,000-sf facility is sited on a 168-acre campus and features a submicron 8-inch wafer fab able to produce eight million components annually. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Maxim expects to resume production of silicon wafers in the new facility by year-end 2004.

El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corp. has selected Anne Arundel County, Md., as the site of its new divisional headquarters. Located at the refurbished Parkway 100, the 109,000-sf facility will accommodate Computer Science’s new homeland security division and approximately 500 employees. The relocation is scheduled for late spring 2004. Computer Sciences is also considering leasing an additional 100,000 sf at Parkway 100.

SUNY Albany is working with International Sematech to create an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) Resist Test Center at Albany Nanotech. Slated for completion in April 2004, the center will be housed in the NanoFab II facility which is currently under construction. The center’s nine employees will test a photosensitive chemical called resist that can transfer a circuit pattern onto a semiconductor wafer. Sematech’s $403 million computer chip research center is also located at Albany Nanotech.

Oasis Semiconductor is nearly quadrupling its size with a move from 7,353 sf to 30,000 sf at Waltham Weston Corporate Center in Waltham, Mass. Oasis is a supplier of silicon chips to the office automation market. The move will shift Oasis from the first to the fourth floor of the six-story, 300,000-sf building.

Vocollect Inc. relocates to its newly constructed 80,000-sf headquarters on August 15, 2003. Constructed adjacent to its current Wilkins Township, Pa., location, the four-story build-to-suit facility will include office, research, and production space, as well as state-of-the-art sound labs. The building also features a fitness center, recreation room, ergonomically designed workstations, and low-glare indirect lighting. Vocollect creates voice technology software and hardware.

The U.S. Army Medical Information Systems and Services Agency (USAMISSA) will occupy 75,000 sf in the North Beach Pavilion at Fort Sam Houston, one of three historic structures there under renovation. The lease is the first in the Fort Sam redevelopment project. USAMISSA is a provider of IT systems support to the Army Medical Department.

Iomega Corp. has completed construction of its new 40,000-sf headquarters in Torrey Pines, Calif. The $2-million facility was designed by Howard-Sneed Architecture and Design and constructed by Johnson & Jennings General Contracting.