Industry News

Dow Chemical Co., based in Midland, Mich., is planning to transform a 55,000-sf facility previously occupied by Collaborative Group Ltd.’s Biotechnology Services Division into a large-molecule drugs contract manufacturing plant to serve the biotech industry. The facility will have a 50,000-liter capacity. World-wide, the capacity to produce large-molecule drugs stands at about 380,000 liters, with a critical shortage of capacity anticipated by 2005.

Charles River Laboratories International, a provider of contract services and research animals to the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, has a 68,000-sf transgenic facility under construction at their Wilmington headquarters. Completion of the building is anticipated in spring 2002. Demand for the company’s products increased significantly as the mapping of the human genome revealed genetic similarities between mice and humans.

Rigel Pharmaceuticals has plans to relocate from 65,000 sf of lab space at the Britannia Pointe Grand Business Park to a new two-building lab facility at Slough Estate’s 22-acre Shearwater development in South San Francisco. The new buildings, which will total 140,000 sf, will begin construction this year. Rigel, whose focus is fluorescent gene marking, anticipates relocating to the new complex in 2002. Completion of the entire seven-building, 570,000-sf Shearwater development is anticipated by summer 2004.

 The Institute for International Economics will soon move to a new 25,000-sf headquarters in Washington. The building was designed by New York-based Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and built over 14 months by Sigal Construction. The developer of the project is Kaempfer. The Institute is a private, non-profit research organization.

NeuStar, the supplier of area codes and blocks of numbers to telephone companies and Internet service providers, has opened its new headquarters office in downtown Washington. Ganek Baer Architects of Littleton, Mass., designed the facility to promote creative collaboration for the egalitarian corporate culture of NeuStar’s 150 employees. Offices are small and hexagonal, and surround open areas containing coffee islands. Small “backyard” alcoves which contain a round table a few chairs accommodate ad hoc consultations.