Industry News

The College of Oceaneering, a commercial diving educational institution, has opened a satellite campus is San Diego that features a diving tank, a hyperbaric chamber, classrooms, and a nondestructive testing lab. The College of Oceaneering is headquartered at its home campus in Wilmington, Calif., and is owned by the National University System.

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has topped out its new $221.9-million George and Cynthia Mitchell Basic Sciences Research Building. Slated for completion and initial occupancy in November, the 18-story, 500,000-sf facility is expected to be fully operational in June 2004. Located in Houston's Texas Medical Center, the building will house six floors of research laboratories, an auditorium, conference facilities, small-animal vivariums, and classrooms for the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.

Honda Power Equipment Manufacturing (HPE) is investing $30-million in an expansion of its Swepsonville factory. The project will add a third production line, implement facility improvements, and create an additional 200 full-time jobs. Slated for completion in early 2004, the expansion will increase HPE's capacity for multi-purpose power equipment engines by 50 percent to 1.5 million units annually in 2004.

The Texas Pain Institute has broken ground on a $1.5-million facility. The two-story, 14,000-sf facility is part of the planned La Hacienda de Salud medical subdivision sited on 5.92 acres in San Antonio's South Texas Medical Center. The development, where physicians will own their own land and buildings, will eventually total up to 70,000-sf of health care and related space in nine buildings and cost approximately $10-million.

Southwest Regional Cancer Center will relocate its main clinic to 31,000 sf on one and a half floors of the new Midtown Medical Office building, now under construction in central Austin. The relocation will enable the center to double the size of its primary clinic which provides treatment for hematology and oncology patients. Ground was broken on the 82,000-sf Class A office building and 524-space parking garage late last year. The $22-million complex is expected to open in 2004. The developer for the project is HTH Capital Ltd.