Industry News

O'Connor Hospital in San Jose approved a three-year strategic plan in November 2002 that will expand physician office space and enhance orthopedic and cardiovascular services. O'Connor will remodel a recently purchased a 32,000-sf building on the city's east side to house a new primary care clinic. The facility will open by year-end 2003. A new $7-million emergency department, relocated from the back of the hospital to the front, will double existing emergency facilities to house 22 beds and will include an urgent care unit.

Bayer Diagnostics, a division of Bayer Corp., has vacated seven East Bay locations to consolidate operations in a recently completed 75,000-sf Berkeley building. Located in Wareham Development's Aquatic Park where Bayer Diagnostics will continue to occupy space in two adjacent buildings, the five-story facility was built to the division's specifications.

The Smithsonian Institution recently held a topping-out celebration for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. The facility's structural concrete frame is now complete. Jones & Jones Architects & Landscape Architects is the design consultant for the museum.

Johnson & Wales University is planning a four-story, 145,000-sf academic center on its new Charlotte campus. Connecting the university's three colleges, the College of Culinary Arts, the College of Business, and the Hospitality College, the facility will be built by RogersDooley, a team of two local contractors.

San Diego-based Guepard Energy will construct four 5-megawatt plants in Imperial County, Calif., that will use methane gas from cow manure to make electricity. Construction of the first facility, located near a beef-processing plant in Brawley, will begin in April 2003. The four plants will cost $50-million to build and will process 1.6 million pounds of manure a day. The San Diego office of Archer Western, a division of Chicago-based Walsh Group, will oversee the project.