Information Technology

Concord EFS, a leading electronic commerce provider, has acquired 27 acres of land for a new, state-of-the-art world headquarters campus. Construction will begin immediately on the 285,000-sf campus and is scheduled for completion in spring 2004. Almost 1,000 employees will be located at the new facility, consolidating the company's workforce from five Memphis locations into one. The executive offices, administrative functions, customer service operations, terminal deployment facilities, and high-tech data center will be located on site.

The University of California, San Diego has selected Gilbane Co. of Phoenix as general contractor and construction manager for the $102.5-million California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology project, Cal-(IT)2. The 215,000-sf research facility is slated to begin construction in January and reach completion in two years.  

Internet services company Internap Network Services Corp. will begin relocation of its Seattle corporate headquarters to Atlanta in October with completion expected by the end of 2002. Seattle will continue to house the company's network operations center, a parallel facility to an Atlanta network operations center that will be built. The co-location facility and supporting engineers will also remain in Seattle.

CPU Technologies Inc. has leased 41,447-sf in the Hacienda Business Park in Pleasanton to house its primary engineering and manufacturing operations. The site, which will employ 130, is in addition to CPU’s existing R&D facility in Pleasanton.

EMC Corp.'s new 650,000-sf engineering and office facility is currently under construction in Hopkinton.  Gorman Richardson Architects, based in Hopkinton, designed the facility and an additional parking garage planned on the campus.

 Plans for the Silver Spring Innovation Center business incubator are being developed by Montgomery County and developer JBG Cos. Housing up to 15 young bioinformatics and information technology companies, the 12,000-sf facility is slated to open in 2003. The incubator is part of a larger mixed-use residential and commercial development including approximately 100,000 sf on the 3-acre site, possibly as a multi-floor facility.

IBM Corp. is creating a low-power computing research center in Austin to develop energy efficient information technology. Based in Armonk, N.Y, IBM is establishing the Austin lab to increase the power efficiency of servers, software, computer chips and other technologies. IBM has undertaken a company-wide initiative to develop low-power computing.

E Commerce, an electronic billing service headquartered in New York, plans to geographically diversify its operations by placing its new data center in Charlotte. The company will open a 4,600-sf data center in April 2002 at the Claude Freeman Technology Center, which is equipped with an uninterrupted power source and the high-tech equipment E Commerce needs for its operations.

PeopleSoft plans to expand its headquarters at Hacienda Business Park pending approvals from the city of Pleasanton. The company’s existing 815,000-sf complex would be supplemented with a new 181,000-sf, five-story office structure on a vacant parcel owned by PeopleSoft across the street. It is anticipated that the building, which would accommodate approximately 800 people, would cost nearly $30-million, and would reach completion in fall of 2003.

Bothell, Wash.-based Allied Telesyn Networks Inc. is looking to permanently occupy a 300,000-sf facility in Raleigh to allow expansion of its research and development operations. Funded by $10 million from its Japanese sister company Allied Telesis, the producer of Internet related hardware and software intends to form a new data networks integration center. Allied Telesyn plans to add 60 employees including new researchers designing networking hardware and software.

E-commerce software maker Vignette Corp. is moving its headquarters and Austin-area offices to 13,000 sf at Barton Skyway II in Austin. Vignette will occupy a total of 130,000-sf in Barton Skyway II with this move.

Cisco Systems’ planned 10-building, 1.5-million-sf office campus in Boxborough may be enlarged by half again as much if approvals from state and town agencies are granted. An additional 500,000 sf in three buildings would be added to the Boxborough site, where three structures are half built, and four more have already been approved. The San  Jose, Calif.-based company hopes to consolidate several of its Massachusetts facilities at the Boxborough site. Move-in is anticipated in mid-2003 at the earliest.

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has selected Gilbane Building Co. as construction manager/general contractor for a new $60-million research facility for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology called Cal-(IT)²—a partnership between UCSD and the University of California, Irvine. The 215,000-sf facility will consist of research neighborhoods, specialized labs, and administrative offices.

VeriSign, an Internet services company, plans to consolidate eight Northern Virginia offices at Waterview I, a 405,000-sf office building under construction in Herndon designed to accommodate 1,600 employees. Tishman Speyer Properties is developing the project, which is scheduled for completion in October 2001. VeriSign has an option on two as-yet-unbuilt structures -- Waterview II and Waterview III -- which will total 450,000 sf.

Data-Centers Now, based in Rockville, Md., is planning CyberPlex@Dulles, a project comprising office space (2.4 million sf), telecom and Internet space (860,000 sf) and an electricity substation to provide power to the facility. The fortress-like data center, housing critical computer data and equipment, will be located at a 425-acre site in eastern Loudon County. The project is valued at $50 million over the next 10 years.