Corporate Office Properties Trust is slated to build two new office buildings at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County?s on-campus research and technology park.
The Columbia-based real estate investment trust will build a four-story, 110,000-square-foot building, which will be completed in the middle of 2007. The company will then start building a second 78,000-square-foot building by early 2007, said Rand Griffin, Corporate Office Properties president and CEO.
The buildings are at 5520 Research Park Drive on ground leased from the UMBC Research Park Corp.?s bwtech@UMBC. They will house small and large technology companies. The construction cost of the first project is estimated at $22 million.
“The first building will help some companies already on thecampus expand,” Griffin said.
Griffin added that other technology companies were already expressing interest in leasing space in the second building.
The first building will be adjacent to a development project recently announced within bwtech@UMBC, which is the 23,500-square-foot new home for the U.S. Geological Survey Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Water Science Center at 5522 Research Park Drive.
The new space will create more opportunities for students and economic development for the Greater Baltimore region, said Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of UMBC Research Park Corp. When the first building is leased, it will bring 500 jobs to the area, she said.
About 40 companies operate in the park and employ about 100 students, she said.
“It does help them keep companies? human capital costs low, but it also exposes them to the best students,” Hemmerly said, describing the mutually beneficial nature of the research park.
When it opened its doors in 1989, bwtech@UMBC was Maryland?s first university research park. The 41-acre park?s first building, completed in 2001, is occupied by RWD Technologies. A second building, finished in 2004, is also fully leased. The space the park has leased to high-tech tenants has mushroomed from 12,000 square feet to 280,000 square feet.
