6 - The Morrisville & Preston Progress. January 1999
Southport office park grows up
Continued from page 1
building, finished last year, was 90
percent rented by Kaiser
Permanente, who was one
Southport's original tenants 10 years
ago.
Buildings 15 and 16, which are
flex buildings still under construc
tion, are almost entirely rented now
by Magellan Laboratories, another
early tenant which rented 4,000
square feet for seven employees in
the fall of 1991 as it was starting its
operations,
Magellan Laboratories now
employs over 300 people, who per
form tests for the pharmaceutical
industry.
Workers from Diversified
Contracting Inc. have finished
upfitting the buildings with water
pipes and air vents used in product
testing. They were awarded the
$2,3 million contract for the con
struction of the 56,348 square foot
laboratory facility (building 15),
DCI hopes to complete the project
in April 1999. Magellan will also
keep its space in building 6 and
about half of building 3.
Meanwhile, construction of the
Windsor building, another top-of-
the-line office building is beginning
across Aviation Parkway, In front of
the Magellan labs, a third “fancy”
office building will be built across
from the Kaiser building, giving a
nice look along Aviation Parkway,
and making Aviation Parkway an
interior street for Southport, Adams
said.
About 2,500 employees work in
Southport now, Adams said. Each
building is about 50,000 square feet.
By early Spring of 1999, there will
be about 750,000 square feet of
space owned by Southport and
leased by 70 companies. When
Phase IV is completed, there will be
close to one million square feet.
Southport originally owned about
50 acres, and has since bought 20
acres for Phase II and 20 more acres '
for Phase III. Negotiations are
going on now for land for about 20
more acres for Phase IV, which will
bring the total project to about 110
acres. Site and subdivision plans
for Phase IV were tabled by the
Morrisville Board of
Commissioners on Jan. 24.
“We have been fortunate to be able
to develop in nice bite-sized pieces
each time,” Adams said. But those
bite size pieces are being developed
faster and faster as growth in the
area booms.
On paper, Southport is the largest
flex and office-space project in
Morrisville, but Adams admitted
that Enterprise Center and Perimeter
Park are counted as separate devel
opments, though both are owned by
Weeks-Lichtin. “We are really num
ber two,” he said.
He is building single-story office
buildings because he is able to offer
a lower rent than multi-story build
ings such as those built by Weeks
and by Highwoods in Weston, which
is even closer to Southport, but
located in Cary.
“The structure is cheaper; you
don’t have to put in elevators, and
the land cost is still $40,000 to
$70,000 an acre, which makes it
affordable,” he said.
Southport is owned by General
Investment Development Co. of
Boston, which also owns about
15,000 apartments and several mil
lion square feet of commercial
space. Southport is the largest com
mercial development for GID.
Some of the other major tenants in
Southport are EDS, a telemarketing
company; IBM, doing business as
TSS (Technical Support Services);
Honeywell and the U.S. Customs
Service.
Adams flew in from Texas for the
original subdivision and site plan in
1988, so he has watched—and
helped along—the development for
over 10 years.
He is possessive of his tenants and
property, offering last year to pay
about $50,000 to put in a traffic
light, after Evans Road opened up
and dumped Cary traffic trying to
get to 1-40 onto Aviation Parkway.
An artist’s rendering of how a portion of the Southport Business Park will look when compieted.
This was necessary not only to
attract tenants, but to keep from
losing the ones he has, he said.
There is still vacant land surround
ing Southport, and Adams said his
company will probably continue to
buy land after Phase IV is underway,
although he is not certain which
direction the development will
take—farther back into the interior
along the new McCrimmon
Parkway, of which Southport has
already committed to build the first
•800 feet—or next to Phase IV along
Aviation Parkway to the west.
But he said his company plans to
continue to own and manage the
buildings; he plans to continue to
look after his tenants, and to contin
ue his involvement in the
Morrisville community.
Adams was an original member
of the Chamber of Commerce,
and is now serving as Vice
President of Morrisville’s new
Rotary Club.
Magellan Labs expands operations at Southport
‘Once we found we could recruit and
retain very, very talented scientists, we
were off and running. That really is our
product. ’
By Mary Beth Phillips
Staff Writer
It’s a success story that anyone
would wish to imitate.
In just eight years time, Magellan
Laboratories has grown from seven
employees to over 300, and
increased its space in Southport
Business Park roughly 30 times.
The company, which does contract
laboratory testing for the pharma
ceutical industry, attributes its suc
cess to the caliber of its scientists,
and the large number of talented sci
entists in the Research Triangle area.
The founders, Drs. Lowry Caudill
and Alfred Childers, had helped
build the analytical chemistry
department at Glaxo,
Both analytical chemists, they had
met previously at graduate school at
Indiana University. They went their
separate ways, Childers to Upjohn
in Michigan, and Caudill to Baxter
in Chicago. They came to Glaxo
about the same time 12 years ago
and renewed their friendship.
—Dr. Lowry Caudill,
Co-founder of Magellan Labs
While working at Glaxo, they
noticed the trend toward outsourc
ing pharmaceutical development
research, and decided to start their
own business in 1991 to provide
those services.
“Although there were contract
companies who could do research,
no one had the level of expertise of
a major pharmaceutical company in
terms of talent, scientific approach,
and pharmaceutical experience,”
Caudill relates. “We built Magellan
to be that mirror image.”
He said the two scientists were
confident in their ability to build an
organization, after building the lab
at Glaxo. “The thing that was scary,
even though you think you can do it,
you don’t know that yet. We had to
step out on our own, just A1 and
myself at the very beginning.
“I remember cutting my lawn in
front of my house, and looking at
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the house wondering if 1 would have
the house the next year at that time.”
His fears were unfounded. Once he
realized that he could recruit the cal
iber of staff he needed, his worries
ended.
“We wondered, would they come
to a small company? But we found a
lot of talented scientists who wanted
to work for an organization like us.
Once we found we could recruit and
retain very, very talented scientists,
we were off and running. That real
ly is our product,” Caudill said.
Today Magellan Laboratories per
forms tests for some of the largest
pharmaceutical companies in the
United States, many of which were
the original clients in the early days,
when Childers and Caudill were in
the lab doing testing themselves.
“When you are starting out, you
will wear whatever hat you have to
\\;ear,” Caudill said. “You’re the
H.R., the financial, administrative,
and technical. I don’t do much in the
lab now, but I enjoyed it tremen
dously. As the company grew, I
backed into technical managing.”
Today Childers handles the finan
cial and administrative and quality
assurance end of things. Caudill
handles the technical and opera
tional matters.
About 75 percent of Magellan’s
staff are scientists. Of that, 50 per
cent are in the lab. Many of the sup
port functions such as quality assur
ance, sales and marketing, also
require that scientific knowhow.
David Slovensky, marketing coor
dinator for Magellan, said the com
pany’s success has been built on the
combination of quality, communica
tion and timeliness.
“A lot of drug manufacturers hesi
tate to use a contract lab because
they feel they are going to lose con
trol. We strive to keep the communi-
Photo by Mary Beth Phillips
Mitch Adams, develper of Southport, is overseeing the building of
Magellan’s new labs at Southport.
cation avenues open. They can be in
touch with the person heading up the
project, not just a lab technician.”
Timeliness is also key. If a product
is going to be worth $365 million a
year, that's $1 million a day. If they
can reduce development time, they
can get their products to market
faster,
“That helps them, and helps the
American public, by getting prod
ucts and medicines developed
faster,” Caudill said.
Magellan’s testing is done only on
the products. There is no animal or
human testing involved. The med
ical testing is left to contract compa
nies like Quintiles or PPD Pharmaco
or to drug companies themselves.
Magellan tests tablets, ointments
and inhalation products. They also
develop all the methods to do the
testing, validate those methods and
set up specifications for product
expiration dates and dosage forms.
“Somebody has to test a product
before it’s released to show the drug
is there at the right level, and the
physical characteristics are correct,”
Caudill said.
Magellan scientists can also help a
company prepare a substance to go
before the Federal Drug
Administration for approval.
The company has increased its
leased space in Southport business
park as it has grown. “We could
grow with them,” Caudill said. “We
get to focus on growing our compa
ny. We don’t have to worry about
being good managers of buildings.
They’ve taken care of that for us.”
Magellan has received the Triangle
“Fast 50” award for the past four
years, and the Triangle “Future 30
Award,” in 1995 and 1997, the
North Carolina “Technology 50”
award in 1996 and 1997, and the
National “Technology 5(X)” award
in 1997.
They were nominated for Inc.
Magazine’s “Inc 500” award. They
received Ernst and Young’s
Entrepreneur of the Year award for
North Carolina and South Carolina
in 1998.
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