Industry News

Kaiser Permanente opened its new $20-million emergency department and decontamination unit in Walnut Creek in mid-November, 2004. Tripling the size of the existing ER, the expansion increased the number of emergency rooms from 31 to 52, with a cardiac monitor and computer in each room. The 32,000-sf facility includes a small lab station for blood or urine samples which channels the samples through a tube at sixty miles per hour to a lab in the medical center within two seconds. The permanent mass decontamination unit includes eight decontamination showers.

Infineon Technologies North America Corp. has opened a new 100,000-sf facility in Cary, N.C. Infineon, based in Munich, Germany, will use the space to accommodate semiconductor chip design and management operations. The company plans to invest a minimum of $8-million in the facility over the next five years.

Silicon Valley Power recently broke ground on the $165-million Von Raesfeld power plant sited on 2.86 acres in Santa Clara, Calif. Locally owned and operated, the 147-megawatt gas-fired plant is expected to reach completion in late 2004.

Johns Hopkins University is constructing a “hybrid” laboratory facility in Boston. The university will engage in academic research in approximately half of the 115,000-sf building, with the rest leased to science and technology companies. Construction is under way, with occupancy slated for fall of 2004. Spaulding & Slye Colliers is the master developer for the project.

Ktech is moving into an 83,400-sf facility in Sandia, N.M., to expand its commercial activity in the semiconductor, sensor, material coatings, and robotics industries. Ktech is a Sandia National Laboratories contractor, supplying operations, engineering, and maintenance services to the Department of Energy’s Pulsed Power Research Center. Ktech’s operations were previously located in six offices in the Albuquerque area.