Industry News

The Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce will initiate construction of its new $55-million Civic Center in Santa Fe's historic district in early 2006. The 45,000-sf Sweeney Center currently located on the site will be demolished to allow construction of the new 72,000-sf facility. Designed by Santa Fe-based Spears Architects and Denver-based Fentress Bradburn Architects, the facility will include a two-story underground parking garage when it reaches completion in fall of 2007.

Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., will spend $1-billion to expand its operations in Cork, Ireland. The project will provide new process development, bulk manufacturing, and fill-and-finish facilities and is slated to break ground later in 2006. The facilities will be operational in 2009. Additionally, Amgen will construct a new development center in Uxbridge, U.K., and expand R&D operations in Cambridge, Mass., San Franscisco, Seattle, and Cambridge, U.K. Amgen will relocate its European headquarters to Zug, Switzerland, from Lucerne.

Westminster College is planning to construct a $30-million, 60,000-sf Science Center on its Salt Lake City campus. The three-story facility will house 14 undergraduate research labs, 14 regular labs, 2 seminar classrooms, 2 general classrooms, 1 informatics lab, faculty offices, and greenhouse spaces. Employing technologies including wireless computing, image capturing microscopes, modeling and miniaturization capabilities, and NMR capability, the building will be designed with flexible, open labs to foster interaction and enable reconfiguration.

United Therapeutics will complete construction on its $32-million laboratory production facility in Silver Spring, Md., in spring of 2006. Sited adjacent to the company's existing biotech headquarters, the 50,000-sf, three-story building was developed and funded by Wachovia Development, who will lease it back to United Therapeutics through 2011. The facility, which broke ground in 2004, will accommodate drug development and pilot production.

The University of Kansas will begin construction in spring 2006 on a 45,000-sf expansion of the Structural Biology Center on its Lawrence campus. Enabling the center to house one of the nation's most extensive collections of pharmaceutical compounds (specifically those intended to treat cancer), the $20-million addition will also contain laboratories, offices, and conference rooms. As the third and final phase of the center, the project is expected to reach completion in mid-2007.