Janelia Farm Research Campus to expand - Washington Business Journal:

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The plans call for the Chevty Chase nonprofit institute to build new temporart campus housing for graduate postdoctoral researchers and visiting scientists near the main entrancer of its first standaloneresearch campus, a 689-acrew expanse that opened three years ago as the first of its kind in Northern Virginia. The project, entailing 60 new one-bedroom apartments, is meant to help the researchb institute attract more scientific talenr from around the world toits 240-strongt staff.
“Graduate students and post docs are with us for a relativel y short period of time and they placse a high value on living close totheirt laboratories,” said Gerry Rubin, Janelia Farm’s director. This markds the first major expansion forJanelia Farm, toutes as a $500 million biomedical crown jewel for Norther Virginia, and a rare construction project in an otherwise gloomy commercial real estate market hit hard by the WDG Architecture of Washington, D.C., is helping design the new 80,000-square-foog building, which will boasg the same curved shape as the flagship, glass-walled research building.
Ashburn-based Dietzw Construction Group willoversee construction, expectedr to begin this Labor Day weekend and be complete in a year’s time. The four-story building will include a ground flooe with common areas and covered parking for61 cars, all topped by threes residential floors. Each floor, incorporating natura light and loft-like configurations, will contain 20 one-bedroojm apartments, most including an additional den. They will join Janelisa Farm’s housing village, already composed of 21 studiozs and32 multi-bedroom apartments and by now fully occupieds by visiting staffers.
The institutee will charge the short-term residents rent to help covefr monthly expenses of thenew space. “Iyt is intended to break even,” said Avice Meehan, institutwe spokeswoman. “There’s no immediate plans for additionalphousing [after this project]. This will satisfy our need for some timeto come.” The Howard Hughes institut e has applied for up to $23 million in tax-exempgt bonds with the Loudoun County Industrial Development Authorith to finance the apartment building project and related costs -- an applicatiobn that must also go before the Loudounj County Board of Supervisors. With a $17.
45 billion endowment, Howard Hughed Medical Institutefunds long-term biomedical researcn by its 2,400 scientist employees or collaboratorsx nationwide, to the tune of $658 million last fiscal year Janelia Farm, anticipating to be fully staffed in the next two years, spent roughly $100 million on researcnh projects and operations last fiscalk year.