Industry News

University of Connecticut (UConn) broke ground in October on Rentschler Field, a $90-million state-funded project aimed at revitalizing the Hartford area and elevating the UConn football program to national status. The 40,000-seat football stadium will serve as home field for UConn Football as well as other sports and entertainment events. The facility will occupy 8.5 acres of the 75-acre site contributed by Hartford-based United Technologies.

Bucknell University has selected Ewing Cole Cherry Brott of Philadelphia to design the University’s new recreation and athletics center. The project includes a sports Hall of Fame, 4,000-seat multipurpose gymnasium with a new student fitness center, natatorium, coaches’ offices, varsity locker facilities, and renovations to the original gymnasium and natatorium. Bucknell’s new facility will connect with the existing athletic center. Construction of the athletic facility began in late November 2000 with completion in the fall of 2002.

Nokia’s three-story, 190,000-sf Product Creation Center in Scripps Ranch won two awards from the local design and architecture community. Davis Davis Architects designed the $44-million facility. The building houses office, research, and recreation facilities and includes lab space (31,000 sf), a dining area with full-service kitchen (3,600 sf) and an executive meeting room (2,600 sf). Several of the project team members include McGraw/Baldwin Architects, Hensel Phelps Construction, and Hope Engineering.

The National Institutes of Health Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center, which broke ground in February 1999, opened in late August 2000. Spaulding & Slye was the developer of the fast-track $32-million, 82,500-sf facility, where researchers in immunology, virology, and HIV will work together toward developing an AIDs vaccine by 2007. The 10-story structure features laboratories, a high-tech education and conference center, cyber café, support spaces, and offices for principal investigators. For flexibility, an open lab plan with 11’ x 13’ space planning modules was chosen.

1838 Investment Advisors, a financial services subsidiary of MBIA, has plans for a new 39,000-sf facility at Renaissance Corsair in the Renaissance Corporate Center in Gulph Mills on a former Superfund site. O’Neill Properties is developing the project in three phases, the first phase breaking ground in late 2000, with completion in August 2001. When complete, the Renaissance Corsair project will provide 400,000 sf in three buildings.