Industry News

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.

The Department of Defense will occupy a 150,000-sf facility in Columbia's Oak Ridge Industrial Park in Howard County. The building houses 50,000-sf of laboratory space and was the former North American headquarters of Bookham Technology.

Caritas Norwood Hospital's 12,000-sf outpatient radiation oncology expansion is being designed by TRO/The Ritchie Organization of Newton, Mass. Slated for completion in April 2003, the one-level addition will connect to the existing facility via a new main vestibule.