olorado's aerospace, software development and telecommunications industry clusters are making way for the New Economy's MVP — the biotech and pharmaceutical sector. A slew of new projects have been announced recently in the state, many of which are expansions of existing facilities whose high-growth tenants simply need more space.
        "Our product development efforts have grown appreciably over the last few years, and we have a number of excellent products moving to commercialization," noted David R. Bethune, chairman and CEO of Atrix Laboratories, when he announced a 32,000-sq.-ft. (3,000-sq.-m.) expansion of the company's Fort Collins manufacturing facility. "As a result, we are broadening our manufacturing and laboratory facilities to support these and future projects."

Mike Duncan, vice president, technical operations, is overseeing the expansion of Atrix Labs' Fort Collins manufacturing facility.

        The addition will expand Atrix's dermatology-products manufacturing capacity, says Mike Duncan, vice president, technical operations. Atrix purchased the facility from another biotech company in 1996; excess capacity at the time allowed Atrix to offer contract manufacturing for several years until its own products were approved and production of them could begin. "Looking out two years, we are going to need every bit of this new plant," says Duncan.
        The site came with about seven acres (2.8 hectares) of land at Colorado State University's Research for Advanced Technology Center. "We bought an additional three acres (1.2 hectares) of land so we would not become land-locked," Duncan elaborates. "As the company has continued to succeed, we decided to expand at this site."
        Why that location? "We're committed to Colorado," says Duncan. "We use a lot of resources from the university and hire a lot of employees from there. It's a highly motivated, highly technical work force."
        Array BioPharma, a Boulder-based drug-discovery company, is expanding its Colorado operations in Boulder and Long mont. In April 2001, the biotech company announced a 114,000-sq.-ft. (10,600-sq.-m.) expansion at its Boulder facility. A 50,000-sq.-ft (4,600-sq.-m.) expansion at the Longmont location had previously been announced.
        Xilinx has consolidated its Colorado operations into a new building in Longmont. The San Jose, Calif.-based supplier of digital, programmable technology plans to develop additional land on the 100-acre (40-hectare) site, according to Sue Mesch, Xilinx's Colorado site manager. About 300 employees currently work at the Longmont location, but the property could accommodate up to 4,000 employees, she says.
        Buckley Air National Guard Base in Aurora has long been an engine driving the area's aerospace industry cluster. Raytheon, which employs about 1,800 people in the Denver suburb, recently consolidated its operations on a corporate campus at Centretech Park. And TRW recently dedicated a new $17-million, 103,000-sq.-ft. (9,500-sq.-m.) building near two existing TRW buildings in Aurora. Eight hundred people work at the complex.