Industry News

Montgomery College’s new $25-million, 7,186-sf Health Sciences Building, slated to begin construction in April 2002, will include a primary care clinic that offers charity medical care to the needy local community. The clinic, scheduled to open in early 2004, will be operated by Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md. Clinical instruction will be provided by hospital medical practitioners working directly with Montgomery’s nursing students.

The University of California, Berkeley, has issued an RFQ for the transformation of 26 acres at its University Village in Albany to a $100-million, mixed-use residential and retail campus. The University hopes to begin construction by early 2003 at the site, where currently student and faculty housing, a community center, baseball fields, and university agricultural research space are located. The selected developer will be asked to improve the community center and baseball fields, build a child and infant care center, and protect as open space two creeks running through the site.

Austin Community College has a simulated semiconductor fabrication facility under construction.  The goal of the mock fab is to train semiconductor technicians as well as draw semiconductor companies in need of trained workers to the Austin area. The $250,000 facility, which can  accommodate 12 students, will have a gowning room, an air shower, a cleanroom, and a gray room for equipment. Construction of the 1,350-sf simulated fab started in June 2001.

Biogen, running out of room at its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., has decided to add lab and administrative office space to its expansion at its RTP site. A 250,000-sf manufacturing facility is currently in the works, with production scheduled to begin in early 2002, and a 150,000-sf lab/administrative offices building is scheduled for completion in six months. The company is in the early design phase of an additional 42,000-sf expansion of its manufacturing facility.

Level 3 Communications Inc. is putting the finishing touches on its new $100 million data center in Needham. Level 3 plans to initially occupy approximately 80,000 sf of the huge 320,000-sf facility. The state-of-the-art structure’s back-up features include wiring for 13,8000 volts of power; a 400,000-gallon buried water tank for the cooling system; and triple redundancies in many of the building systems. Construction manager for the project is Sullivan & McLaughlin Cos. of Boston.