Industry News

Pradco (Plastic Research and Development Co.) is planning to build a $21 million manufacturing facility in Fort Smith, Ark. Sited in the 7,000-acre Chaffee Crossing corporate park, the 300,000-sf facility will more than double Pradco’s plastic manufacturing operations.

Stempeutics Research opened a 5,000-sf stem cell research facility on the campus of Manipal University in India in July of 2008. Located at Shirdi Sai Baba Cancer Hospital, the cGMP laboratory will support therapeutics research and production with two Class 10,000 cleanrooms. The facility is designed to USA Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT) standards and employ cGTP (current Good Tissue Practice) manufacturing processes.

Mercy Medical Center’s $262 million hospital in Merced, Calif., is slated for completion in December of 2009. Housing 196 private patient rooms, the 265,000-sf, eight-story facility will open to patients in spring of 2010. Mercy Medical Center is part of Catholic Healthcare West.

The University of California, Merced began construction on a $38.5 million academic facility for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts in July of 2008. Slated for completion in spring of 2010, the three-story building will house teaching and research labs, classrooms, research lab offices, and art studios. The project will increase available space for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts from 90,000-sf to 192,000-sf. The facility will also include an entrepreneurship center and the Ernest and Julio Gallo School of Management.

IBM is planning a $1.5 billion expansion of its research and manufacturing operations in New York State. IBM will invest $400 million at the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering as well as initiating an extensive expansion of its East Fishkill chip manufacturing and research facility. Additionally, a packaging plant will be constructed in upstate New York. Completion of IBM’s statewide expansion is expected by 2011.