Industry News

U.S. Department of Interior's Fish & Wildlife Service has retained HarleyEllis of Southfield, Mich., to provide architectural and engineering design services for the Clark R. Bavin National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory expansion in Ashland. The 48,000-sf project encompasses the analysis and renovation of 23,000-sf of existing facility and the design of 25,000 sf of expansion. The expanded facility will house forensics labs, a firing range, administration, and conference space.

Merial has plans to relocate and consolidate its five major U.S. animal health operations to several sites in Georgia. A suburb of Atlanta will be selected for the company's North American headquarters, where 400 employees will be housed. The company's Athens, Ga., manufacturing and research facility will accommodate an additional 80 relocated R&D employees. The University of Georgia will be the site of a planned pilot vaccine development facility, where Merial would manufacture both animal and human vaccines.

Siebel Systems plans to relocate 750 administrative personnel to the 205,000-sf Concar project planned by Wilson/Equity Office in San Mateo. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2001, with move-in anticipated 18 months later. The fast-growing software company is in the process of occupying its new 450,000-sf headquarters at the Bridgepointe development 10 minutes' drive from the Concar site. Bridgepointe is a Sobrato Development project.

Intuit has relocated two departments from its corporate regional headquarters in San Diego to 47,000 sf at the Bridge Point Corporate Center in the UTC area of San Diego. Ware & Malcomb, Architects, of San Diego, provided full service interior design services for the new space, which includes open office, closed office, a state-of-the art server lab, conference facilities, video tele-conferencing facilities, and collaborative break out areas. Intuit is the developer of innovative financial software, including Quicken and TurboTax.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) plans to build a new two-building headquarters at Rockville's Tower Oaks development for PG&E's National Energy Group, currently based in Bethesda, Md. PG&E will consolidate operations from Houston and Portland, Ore., at the new 480,000-sf headquarters which will accommodate up to 1,000 employees. The Tower Oaks is owned for the most part by The Tower Co's of North Bethesda, Md.