Industry News

ChevronTexaco is consolidating area operations with the purchase of a 40-story office tower in Houston. The 1.2 million-sf building was originally built for Enron but never occupied. Chevron Texaco is also purchasing an adjoining 1,100-car parking garage. The new facility will accommodate approximately 3,700 employees.

Dental device maker Straumann USA will open its first U.S. manufacturing facility in Andover with the lease of 155,000 sf to 165,000 sf at 100 Minuteman Drive. Owned by Brickstone Properties Inc. of Andover, the facility will accommodate the company’s local headquarters as well as manufacturing and assembly operations. Straumann will occupy the entire first floor and some of the second floor in the 321,000-sf facility, which features 24-foot clear heights. Straumann USA is a division of Switzerland-based Straumann Holding AG.

St. Louis-based Sigma Aldrich Corp. will construct an $8-million laboratory-scale production facility in Hyderabad, India. Expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2005, the 50,000-sf complex will eventually house up to 80 chemists doing contract research and process development for the pharmaceutical industry.

Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics dedicated its new 32,000-sf Pediatric Research Center at the hospital’s main Kansas City, Mo., campus in late February 2004. The $17-million research center is one component of a new clinic and research building.

The University of Florida will fund the renovation of one of two buildings purchased as the home for the Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology with a $2 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Commission. The center, sited in the Progress Corporate Park in Alachua, Fla., will focus on the transformation of laboratory discoveries into medicines suitable for clinical trials.