Long Island Medical Organization to Build $45 Million Lab Facility

The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System last week announced plans to erect a 55,000-square-foot addition to its headquarters in Manhasset, NY.

The facility, budgeted to cost $45 million and slated for completion in the latter part of 2007, will house two floors of laboratories, a conference center and one floor dedicated to ongoing research in Alzheimer's disease,
Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic lymphocytic leukemia as well as other projects.

The project is to be supported in part by some $50 million in government grants as well as a $45 million donation from Leonard and Susan Feinstein. Leonard Feinstein is the co-founder and co-chairman of the Bed Bath & Beyond retail chain, and the institution's research organization will be named The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

The institute already is an NIH-designated general clinical research center with molecular biology and genetics core facilities as well as positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, a viral vector laboratory, a tissue and DNA bank and a biostatistics group.

Certainly this announcement points to the one growth area in the new biology economy – laboratory facilities. There is a virtual building boom across the nation as communities and regions position their areas for the future by creating multi million-dollar buildings to attract researchers and funding.