Industry News

Hershey Foods has completed a 1.1 million-sf distribution center in Edwardsville, Ill. Located in the Gateway Commerce Center, the facility includes a two-story, 19,000-sf office area. The exterior of the building uses insulated metal panels allowing a 60 degree temperature in the interior, which features a special concrete floor constructed to handle the loads required by Hershey’s storage needs. The project contractor was Korte Co. of  St. Louis.

Owens-Illinois broke ground on a 450,000-sf glass manufacturing plant in Windsor, Colo., in early June 2004. The $119-million plant will manufacture about 1 billion bottles annually for the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Fort Collins.

Midstate Electric Cooperative broke ground in June 2004 on its new 55,000-sf LaPine, Ore., campus. Designed by Bend-based Steele Associates Architects and constructed by R&H Construction, a firm with offices in Portland and Bend, the facility will be the first LEED™-certified building in Central Oregon. The project will feature insulated concrete form exterior walls, low VOC-emitting finish materials, ground source heat pumps, construction waste reduction and recycling, automated HVAC systems, natural day-lighting, and the use of recycled content building materials.

Kaiser Permanente opened a new 50,000-sf clinical laboratory in Richmond , Calif., in April 2004. Augmenting an existing 100,000-sf laboratory in Berkeley , the high technology facility will handle 25,000 lab specimens daily, including immunohematology, toxicology, immunochemistry, automated chemistry, hematology, and coagulation. Kaiser’s Richmond campus currently houses a training facility for allied health sciences and an optical lab.

Connetics Corp., a maker of acne and dermatological disease products, is relocating within the city of Palo Alto, Calif. from 53,000 sf at its current West Bayshore Road location to 96,000 sf in the Stanford Research Park. Connetics may also lease an additional 20,000 sf in an adjacent building at the site, which is the former headquarters of Incyte Corp. The move and subsequent renovations at the new location will double Connetics’ office and laboratory space.