High Tech

The Huawei Technologies Corporate Data and Command Center, a 130,000-sf facility designed by RTKL’s Applied Technology Group in Baltimore, Md., is now under construction in Shenzhen, China.  Huawei is a leading supplier of telephone switching equipment in China. The ‘world class’ command center includes an executive briefing room overlooking a two-story, 50-seat command center station. The center supports an equipment load of 40w/sf in 20,000 sf of space, with expansion at the same load density up to 40,000 sf.

Siemens Inc. has moved its Enterprise Network Division into 325,000 sf at San Jose's Skyport Plaza. The first phase of the 38-acre mixed use Skyport Plaza development consists of three eight-story buildings, two four-level parking garages providing approximately 1,760 parking spaces, a basketball court and pedestrian walkways. The second phase, a mirror of Phase I's commercial office and parking design, will progress as economic conditions improve.

EMC Corp.'s new 650,000-sf engineering and office facility is currently under construction in Hopkinton.  Gorman Richardson Architects, based in Hopkinton, designed the facility and an additional parking garage planned on the campus.

Tokyo Electron America is in the early planning stages for a $50-million, 40,000-sf 300-millimeter process integration center. The R&D facility will focus on developing tools for 300-mm chip manufacturing. Construction is slated to begin within two years at a 32-acre site near the company’s current operations in Southeast Austin. The semiconductor equipment supplier is a subsidiary of Tokyo Electron Ltd. based in Japan.

Sun Microsystems has selected Bottom Duvivier of Redwood City, Calif., to design a 110,000-sf shared work environment at Foundry Square in San Francisco, a project under development by Wilson Equity Office. The facility will house 400 to 500 employees doing research and development, with some employees working from home. At the center, desks and computers can be reserved for given time periods; and lockers are provided. Tenant improvements are scheduled to begin in September 2002, with completion in five months.

Fortress Development has selected RTKL of Baltimore to provide design, master-planning, architecture, engineering, and telecommunications services for its 425-acre Loudoun County data center and office complex. Slated to begin construction in late 2002, the $500-million project, known as CYBERPLEX@DULLES, will feature a 110,000-sf multiple-tenant data center or office building.  

Electroglas, maker of high-tech equipment, is relocating its wafer-prober manufacturing operations from San Jose, Calif., to Singapore. Wafer probers, used in silicon wafer manufacturing for computer chips, are slated to be produced at the Singapore plant beginning in mid-2002; all released probers will reach full production by mid-2003.

U.S. Dataport, based in San Jose, Calif., has abandoned plans to build a 3,750,000-sf, $1.4-billion data center in Gainesville in favor of a general high-tech business park housing office and light manufacturing space for products such as telecom gear or computer chips. The 192-acre site will also provide 400,000 sf of data center space, a $300 million independent power plant, and a Virginia Railway Express station for transporting the potential 3,000 workers to the business park.

RTKL Associates Inc. has been awarded the design contract for the development of Fortress Development Company's (previously  DataCentersNow) new 425-acre data center and office community that will be located in Loudoun County, Virginia. The site will house 2.4 million sf of office space and 860,000 sf of mission critical data center space. Construction for phase one of the 10-year project, which will be completed in two phases, is slated to begin later this year.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced in January that it plans to build its new 300mm chipmaking fabrication plant in Singapore, rather than in Texas or another U.S. location, despite significant efforts by many cities to draw the project to their region. AMD will partner with United Microelectronics Corp., based in Taiwan, to spread the costs of building the fab.

California-based tech giant Cisco Systems has planned 13 buildings in Boxborough and Littleton totalling 1.5 million sf and is seeking approval to develop 500,000 sf in three additional buildings for a total of 2 million sf. At the Boxborough office campus, the network switching and routing company's "second home" in Massachusetts, only a small portion of the currently unoccupied 10-building campus has been built.

Nitronex, a manufacturer of semiconductor chips that increase speed and capacity for wireless applications, recently occupied a new 69,000-sf office/laboratory at the Lincoln Park West business park. The company employs 55 people.

Cisco Systems’ planned 10-building, 1.5-million-sf office campus in Boxborough may be enlarged by half again as much if approvals from state and town agencies are granted. An additional 500,000 sf in three buildings would be added to the Boxborough site, where three structures are half built, and four more have already been approved. The San  Jose, Calif.-based company hopes to consolidate several of its Massachusetts facilities at the Boxborough site. Move-in is anticipated in mid-2003 at the earliest.

Oepic Inc. has begun constructing the initial 4,000 sf of  what will be a new 12,000-sf cleanroom for manufacturing semiconductors that will speed fiber-optic communications. Technical Builders Inc. of San Jose, Calif., is handling the $5-million project. At completion, the cleanroom will house an additional $20 million in equipment.

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.