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.

Sandia/California National Laboratories dedicated the new Distributed Information Systems Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., on June 10, 2004. The 70,000-sf facility will enable high-speed information transfer between labs, particularly those with a focus on nuclear weapons research. The $37.9-laboratory will accommodate 130 researchers and include unclassified space where twenty to thirty visiting researchers can work with Sandia staff members. Sandia operates sites in both Livermore and Albuquerque.

Tokyo-based Toray Industries has completed construction of a 70,000-sf manufacturing plant in Decatur, Ala. Built by Doster Construction of Birmingham, the $25-million plant will produce Teflon fiber products used in DuPont fabrics, sealants, and non-stick cooking surfaces. Designed by Gresham Smith & Partners of Nashville, the facility is sited across the street from Toray’s existing $70-million, seven-year-old facility.

Thomas Built opened its new 275,000-sf bus manufacturing plant in south High Point, N.C. in early June 2004. Designed to make 44 school buses daily, the $39.7-million plant is already running at full capacity due to rising demand by school districts and is producing 60 buses a day.