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St. Louis Business & Technology News
www.slfp.com/SLFPBIZp.htm "When you think Saint Louis, think Saint Louis Front Page," a weekly publication covering the news and events in the greater St. Louis area. 
St. Louis Front Page P.O. Box 1354 St. Louis, MO 63188 Voice: 314-771-0200 Fax: 314-771-0300 To submit news, contact: editor@slfp.com To advertise, contact: advertising@slfp.com 
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California Developer Buys Historic Chemical Building 
ST. LOUIS, (SLFP.com) February 12, 2006 - Los Angeles based Heisman Properties LLC has
announced that the company closed on its purchase of the Chemical Building in
Downtown Saint Louis. The company plans to restore the building to its
original grandeur, and in the process convert it from an office building into
luxury residences and apartments.The Chemical Building, located at 721 Olive St., includes over 177, 000 square feet of central downtown real estate, with each of its 17 floors offering breathtaking views perfectly suited for a residential conversion. "This building represents some of the best historical architecture in the downtown core," said Heisman Properties principal Rob McRitchie in an announcement. The building was designed by architect Henry Ives Cobb in 1896 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The multi-use plan developed by Heisman Properties entails ground floor retail, two floors of office space, nine floors of market-rate apartments and luxury grade condos finishing off the top four floors. "When complete, it will be the only doorman building in St. Louis," observes Jeff Adkison, a principal with Heisman Properties. With other added conveniences including underground parking and Dooley's Restaurant, this $22 million rehab promises to be a valuable addition to the Old Post Office district. Downtown St. Louis is experiencing unprecedented revitalization, and this project will enhance St. Louis' image, vibrancy and quality of life. "We believe in the downtown St. Louis residential market and are confident the desire to live in the area will only continue to grow," stated Heisman Properties principal, Curt Schroeder. Heisman Properties entered the St. Louis market in 2004 when it purchased the former A.D. Brown and converted it into loft condominiums known as The Meridian. That ten story landmark features 98 loft condominiums and five two-story penthouse units. Impressively, the building is already 80% sold well before its projected June 2006 opening. The company's historic redevelopment projects here and around the country are excellent examples of Heisman Properties' strategic vision. According to Chad Forrest, vice president of Heisman Properties, "Our primary investment focus is consistent with current urban renewal trends. We expect continuing change in demographics and lifestyle preferences and ever increasing commute times to continue to drive a significant portion of the population to choose an urban lifestyle." Favorable Historic Tax Credits, such as those offered in Missouri, are strong incentives in selecting cities in which to invest. That factor combined with an expansive inventory of beautiful, century old buildings, makes St. Louis an attractive market. Bioinformatics Consortium at University of Missouri Adds SGI Technology ST. LOUIS, (SLFP.com) February 12, 2006 - The Bioinformatics Consortium at the University of Missouri recently purchased high-performance computing technology from Silicon Graphics and an SGI(R) InfiniteStorage storage area network (SAN) with 8TB of capacity. The new SGI(R) Altix(R) server was specifically chosen for its shared-memory architecture and Linux(R) operating environment, which will allow researchers, particularly in areas of molecular dynamics, molecular modeling, protein structure prediction, and a number of allied activities, to run larger-scale problems than ever before. Installed in November, the SGI systems were made available to university researchers beginning in mid-December. The Altix will immediately take over a large number of big computational chemistry jobs currently being run on a slower server, including structural studies of bipolymers, chemistry in interstellar space, and polar order in crystalline organic molecular materials. Researchers studying environmental issues using satellite and GIS data, and other scientists studying electrical properties of solid-state devices, have already requested blocks of time on the SGI Altix system as well. There is also very early-stage research of electronic structure, crystal structures and chemical structures of various biological compounds with the idea of being able to use natural organic compounds to develop computational capabilities. The primary reason the University purchased the SGI Altix system is to run these kinds of problems, which require massive processing power and shared-memory architecture to get results in hours instead of days or weeks. "One of the key inhibiting factors for researchers who want to run larger problems is the size of memory," said Dr. Gordon Springer, Scientific Director, Bioinformatics Consortium, University of Missouri. "With the SGI Altix we're significantly increasing our capacity for large-scale computations requiring large memory, problems that are even beyond the scope of our existing system, which is hardly small. We've run some benchmarks, and jobs that were taking about 50 to 60 hours on the HP Alpha SC system actually took about 2 to 6 hours on a similarly configured SGI Altix. I consider the Altix to be a keystone in our infrastructure. The Altix was, I believe, the most appropriate system that we could put in place that would support the symmetric multiprocessing large-scale shared-memory environment for life sciences researchers across the university system." Life sciences are a strategic area for the University of Missouri, which encompasses four campuses: Kansas City, St. Louis, Rolla, and the flagship campus in Columbia. The University of Missouri Bioinformatics Consortium was founded in July 2001, with the mission of providing infrastructure to support the life sciences researchers across the University system. The University carries out joint research projects in medicine, and in life sciences generally, and maintains active relationships with Missouri-based medical IT firms, agricultural corporations such as Danforth Plant Sciences Center, biotech companies including Monsanto, and the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. The Bioinformatics Consortium resources are networked university-wide and to the Abilene 10Gb Internet2 network nationally. The University of Missouri is looking into building a high-speed network for inter-campus communication as well as looking at alternatives, including joining the National LambdaRail, a dark fiber high-speed network rapidly being adopted by leading universities nationwide. The Bioinformatics Consortium also supports some projects on animal and plant sciences, including the possibility of engineering animals for organ transplants for humans. Four years ago, University of Missouri genetic engineering researchers were the first to clone a pig using the techniques for transgenic nuclear transfer. Subsequent experiments have identified two genes responsible for material in a pig's heart that causes instantaneous rejection in humans. The University has now grown a herd of pigs without those two genes, meaning that the possibility exists -- by inserting human DNA into a pig -- to actually customize a pig heart for a human transplant with little or no immune system rejection, perhaps in five to 10 years. Dr. Springer expects some data analysis work will be done on the SGI Altix system, as researchers start moving into trying to understand the chemistry and molecular structure of some of these genes. "The addition of the processing power of the SGI Altix to the University of Missouri's Bioinformatics Consortium will encourage scientists from many disciplines to move from their lab desktops into the world of large datasets, which can be run in hours not days, or weeks," said Afshad Mistri, senior manager of scientific markets, SGI. "The results of that research will, in time, benefit everyone, and the training will enable students to easily move into jobs in biotech firms, government research labs and medical IT systems companies where the shared-memory architecture and power of SGI systems are being rapidly adopted."  
The Saint Louis Front Page is owned and maintained by the Moore Design Group for the sole purpose of disseminating news and information about the Metropolitan Saint Louis area. Text or graphics may not be copied, rewritten or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission. For more information, contact editor@slfp.com All rights reserved world wide © 1996 - 2008 Moore Design Group . |
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