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.

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.

The 218,000-sf Medimmune Project is under construction in Gaithersburg. Construction began on the first $85-million phase in March 2002; completion is expected in June 2003 excluding tenant fit-outs and labs. Medimmune is the primary tenant for the facility, which is being developed by Quadrangle Development.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will occupy a 140,000-sf facility under construction in the Redland Tech Center in Rockville. Slated for completion in March of 2003, the facility includes a 670-car surface parking lot. Developer The Stephen A. Goldberg Co. plans to build two more facilities at the Redmond Tech Center for a total of 500,000 sf. The project is sited on 27 acres of forest preserve, of which the buildings occupy 13 acres.