Industry News

Plans recently completed for a new 23,000-sf central plant at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are now under review by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development in Sacramento. Providing 10 megawatts of emergency power and 6,000 tons of chilled water, the underground plant will be added to the existing 4,500-ton electrical plant and will work in conjunction with it. Beginning construction in October and slated for completion in April 2003, the project is estimated to cost $22 million.

Cingular Wireless intends to build a data center on land the company purchased in Alpharetta. Slated for completion in the first quarter of 2002, the facility will be developed by Holder Properties.

City approval has been granted to FedEx Corp. to build a new San Francisco distribution center. The 110,000-sf facility will serve 80 routes and house 100 relocated workers in addition to 65 new hires. The center is slated for completion in 2002.

VeriSign, an Internet services company, plans to consolidate eight Northern Virginia offices at Waterview I, a 405,000-sf office building under construction in Herndon designed to accommodate 1,600 employees. Tishman Speyer Properties is developing the project, which is scheduled for completion in October 2001. VeriSign has an option on two as-yet-unbuilt structures—Waterview II and Waterview III—which will total 450,000 sf.

The University of California, Merced,  will occupy a newly-completed 68,000, five-story office building—“University Square”—in Bakersfield. The Kern County Superintendent of Schools is also a tenant. Classrooms occupy the first two floors, with the upper floors housing support offices. An adjacent parking structure is also part of the project designed by Ware Malcomb of Irvine, Calif. The developer is The Allen Group. The general contractor was S.C. Anderson Inc. of Bakersfield.