Industry News

Toppan Optical Products has opened a new $40 million, 94,000-sf plant in Poway, Calif. The facility accommodates production manufacturing using computerized controls in a cleanroom environment.

The University of Texas is planning its new $22-million Department of Biomedical Engineering facility on its main Austin campus. The four-story, 80,000-sf facility will provide classroom and research space for three areas of biomedical engineering: imaging, computing, and molecular and cellular bioengineering. Office and classroom space will occupy 40,000 sf;  laboratories will occupy the remaining 40,000-sf. The research facilities will house dry labs for computer and instrumentation studies as well as wet lab space. Occupancy is expected in 2005.

Stanford University Medical School is planning to create the Biotech Research Center for Children's Health with $700,000 in funding received from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has selected Dietz Construction to build-out its new 650,000-sf headquarters facility at Station Place in Washington, D.C. Interior construction is slated to begin in fall of 2003 and reach completion in November 2004.

Ground was broken on October 10, 2003 on Charleston Southern University’s new $11.3 million science building, an undergraduate teaching and multi-disciplinary research laboratory facility. The two-story, 54,000-sf building is scheduled for occupancy in January 2005. Lord, Aeck & Sargent of Atlanta is the project architect and programmer. The firm has also been commissioned to renovate CSU’s Jones/Ashby Hall, which currently houses biology and chemistry labs.