Industry News

Brown University of Rhode Island selected Hopkinton, Mass.-based Gorman Richardson Architects to design several projects on the school's Bio-Medical Campus.

The National Center for Children's Rehabilitation, created in partnership by the Children's National Medical Center and the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH), is scheduled to open July 1 in Washington. The top floor of NRH's three-story northwest D.C. facility will be renovated to create 15,000- to 25,000-sf of space housing an initial 10 beds to care for patients age 12 to 18.

The University of California-Davis is building the new Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, a $60.9-million facility named in honor of the Napa Valley vintner who targeted $10 million for the center. State-of-the-art technology and acoustics are built into the 1,800-seat performance hall and 250-seat studio theater. Portland, Ore.-based BOORA Architects designed the 104,000-sf center, which is scheduled to open in October 2002.

The California Department of Justice has opened a sophisticated new $18-million, 68,000-sf crime lab at Point Richmond to help identify suspects through their DNA for previously unsolved crimes. Housed at the new lab are 141 scientists, the Cal DNA Data Bank, the Missing Persons DNA program, and the Cold Hit program, which compares crime scene evidence with the DNA of known qualifying offenders to identify suspects in unsolved crimes. The lab’s database of 210,000 DNA samples is the country’s largest.

Rutgers University School of Business is planning the new Rutgers-Camden High-Tech Business Incubator/Commercialization Center. The "virtual incubator", under the auspices of the William G. Rohrer Center for Management and Entrepreneurship, will provide computer services, high-speed Internet access, conference space, and telephone assistance to fledgling technology companies. The incubator is being developed and funded by a $435,000 contract with the Delaware River Port Authority.