Industry News

Oakwood Research Facility, a breeder of pathogen-free rabbits for medical research, received approval in July of 2007 to construct a rabbit facility in Attica Township, Michigan. The planned facility will be comprised of three 8,000-sf pathogen-free barns. Oakwood Research provides rabbits to the Indiana-based lab animal distributor Harlan Sprague Dawley, whose clients include the University of Michigan Ann Arbor Medical School, Michigan State University, The Cleveland Clinic, and Duke University.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture dedicated its high containment large animal facility in Ames, Iowa in July of 2007. As the second component of a multi-phase, $460 million project, the state-of-the-art animal health center will accommodate research on a variety of endemic, zoonotic and foreign animal diseases. Housing BSL-3 laboratories, the facility was constructed in three and a half years and cost approximately $85 million. The new building contains more than 155,000 sf and will house cattle, bison, elk, deer, reindeer, sheep and hogs.

UC Davis completed construction of the 125,000-sf Veterinary Medicine III A building in summer of 2007. The $77 million facility houses classrooms and research space to enable consolidation of the School of Veterinary Medicine in a single location. The project began construction in March of 2002 and was publicly funded.

The Centre for Phenogenomics completed its $50-million facility in the Lebovic Research Centre in Toronto in mid-2007. The 120,000-sf, 180,000-mouse facility houses research laboratories for the study of physiological phenotyping, generation of mutant mice, behavioral analysis, imaging, pathology, and cryopreservation. The project team included engineering firms LKM and SNC-Lavalin Engineering & Technology.

Cornell University celebrated the opening of the 79,000-square-foot East Campus Research Facility (ECRF) on June 26, 2007. Housing approximately 45,000 mice, including transgenic strains, the $55-million building will also accommodate rats, woodchucks, guinea pigs, hamsters, and chickens. Part of Cornell's $600-million New Life Sciences Initiative, the consolidated animal research facility was five years in the making and is expected to be fully operational in fall of 2007. The project was designed by Philadelphia-based Ballinger.