Industry News

The program for Ford Motor Company's Premier Automotive Group Headquarters Facility consists of a five-story 250,000-sf office tower, 30,000-sf design center, and a four-story parking structure. The facility consolidates the North American Headquarters for Ford's five luxury automotive brands, while maintaining individual brand identity. The project, built as a "green" facility, incorporates sustainable features. The LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) 2.0 guideline was used with the following results:

Idec Pharmaceuticals is planning a five-building, 470,000-sf biotech factory in Oceanside. The $500-million complex, with a 90,000-liter biologic manufacturing capacity, will be sited on 60 acres and will be comparable in size to Disneyland.

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.