Click on the image at right to view a chart showing the breakdown of spending by market region. Geographically, the project activity is spread throughout 26 states and one in Puerto Rico. California managed to top North Carolina for first-quarter project starts with four projects valued at $278 million, as opposed to three projects at $70 million. This is a sharp shift from the first quarter of 2006, when North Carolina easily trumped California with its three projects weighing in at a TIV of $244 million compared to the latter’s $52 million TIV and two project total.
While the average TIV of the 2007 projects an impressive $39.5 million, this figure is actually a slight decrease from 2006’s first-quarter TIV of $43.2 million. Helping up the ante in 2006 was the beginning of construction on a $200 million parenterals expansion project for Bristol-Myers Squibb at its Manati site in Puerto Rico. Another big-ticket project that began this time last year was the first phase of the Kannapolis, North Carolina Biopolis campus, now rising at the site of the former Pillowtex plant.
Currently, the largest reported project scheduled to begin within the first 90 days of 2007 is the $500 million phase I of the East River Science Park in New York, N.Y. Following a trend being repeated across the country (reference: 2007 Pharmaceutical-Biotech Industry Forecast), city planners are hoping to spur further commercial life science development with the campus, in turn spurring the typically higher-salaried jobs found within the sector. Another major project, which is adhering to current industry trends, is Ben Venue Laboratories’ (Bedford, Ohio) continuing expansion of its contract manufacturing (CMO) plant in Bedford. The $175 million project will further increase the site’s capacity for liquid and lyophilized sterile products. Ben Venue is a division of German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim, which is in the midst of another major domestic expansion project at its APIs site in Virginia (see: Boehringer-Ingelheim Continues Aggressive $260 Million Expansion Program at Virginia Plant Site).
Continuing its trend of being an important component of the industry’s high-profile capital activity, the 13 current university-based projects account for 31 percent of 2007’s first quarter project starts. Representing a healthy TIV of $447 million, the average project TIV is $34.3 million. These figures demonstrate an increase of 5 projects, or 44 percent, over the nine that began in the first quarter of 2006. The increase of TIV was an almost identical gain of 43 percent, or $134 million. The largest of the projects set to begin shortly is UCLA’s (Los Angeles) $136 million investment for a 175,000-square-foot Life Sciences Replacement building, which will provide wet and dry research labs and related support space for programs in the Life Sciences Division.
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