Industry News

Suntory Water Group of Atlanta is consolidating regional call centers with a move to the planned Tanners Creek project in Flowery Branch, Ga. Suntory will be occupying 20,000 sf of the 2,000,000-sf, 150-acre mixed-use development which features fiber-optic cable technology and includes office, hotel, retail, and restaurant facilities.  

Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, has awarded the Columbus office of Turner Construction Company the contract to build a new $47 million Heart Hospital. Construction is scheduled for completion in February 2004. Turner is the general contractor. This project is a joint venture between Turner Construction Company and Elford Construction of Columbus. The new facility will be three stories tall with a basement.

Beaumont Hospital's $42 million Laboratory/Research Building expansion at the hospital's Royal Oak, Mich., campus was planned and designed by Detroit-based HarleyEllis. The 131,000-sf, five-story addition opened in May 2001 and consists of new laboratory space with a fully automated blood analysis line as well as clinical pathology offices. The project also included the renovation of lab areas within the main hospital and a new pedestrian tunnel linking the Research Building to the materials handling dock.

Construction will begin in spring of 2002 on Ammendale South Technology Center in Beltsville, Md., where the Food and Drug Administration is leasing 51,000 sf of the 185,000-sf campus. Developed and leased by Manekin, the trio of one-story campus buildings was designed by Stephens Aylward & Associates.

Dutch firm Qiagen's 200,000-sf Germantown manufacturing facility and U.S. headquarters will be operational in late February 2002 after two years of construction. The biotech firm plans to hire 300 employees, one-third of whom will work in R&D operations and two-thirds in manufacturing. Qiagen Sciences, Qiagen's U.S. subsidiary, makes products and tools for life science research.