Industry News

Computer Sciences Corp. has halted construction plans for its 194,000-sf, $20-million Irving, Texas, headquarters, and may consider instead a lease of existing space. The technical services firm, based in El Segundo, Calif., hopes to consolidate operations housed in 403,600 sf in five Dallas-Fort Worth area buildings. The project team for the planned Irving headquarters includes McMahon Development as project manager and Clayco as general contractor.

Burger King, based in Miami, is in the process of occupying its newly completed 8-story, 160,000-sf Waterford headquarters, a replacement of the company's southern Miami-Dade County headquarters. The burger giant has also acquired 40,000 sf of office space on four floors in Dadeland Towers, currently under construction, with a multiyear lease. All employees will be relocated to the Waterford office complex, located near Miami International Airport, or the Dadeland facility by Sept. 21.

Geomet Technologies has opened a 6,000-sf facility in Gaithersburg, Md., comprised of administrative space, three laboratories, and cold storage facilities. The facility will enable Geomet, a subsidiary of the Springfield-based homeland defense company Versar, to perform biological detection services testing. Operating as a biological safety level two (BSL-2) lab as certified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the labs can perform R&D on dangerous biological organisms including dead anthrax strains.

Sibley Memorial Hospital, a 340-bed, full-service hospital in Northwest D.C., is planning a new $10-million cancer center expected to open in fall of this year. Significantly increasing radiation therapy treatment capacity, the new single story 14,000-sf addition will be funded by $40 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds. The bonds will also help pay for the 8.5-acre site adjacent to the hospital purchased from the Army Corps of Engineers on which part of the cancer center will be located.

Seminole Community College plans to build a three-story, 90,000-sf high-tech training facility on a $1.5-million, 6.1-acre site donated to the college by the Pizzuti Cos. Located in the Heathrow International Business Center, the facility will present curriculum designed to meet the needs of the high-tech employers for which the area has become a magnet. Construction is expected to begin in the next 12 months.