Largest U.S. Building Implosion of 2005 Will Come Sunday, November 6, in Memphis

MEMPHIS, Tennessee, November 1, 2005 - On Sunday, November 6, 2005, the Memphis Bioworks Foundation will implode a 924,000-square-foot building, the largest implosion to occur in the United States this year.

It will take only seconds for the 20-story tower to fall during the controlled collapse, but preparations have been underway since May when workers began removing salvageable and hazardous materials such as asbestos from the building.

The tower, which housed Baptist Memorial Hospital-Medical Center, once the largest private hospital in the nation, is being cleared for construction of the UT-Baptist Research Park, a state-of-the-art campus designed for the highly specialized needs of Memphis' growing bioscience community.

The research park will ultimately consist of 1.2 million square feet of laboratory, research, education and business development space located on a 10-acre campus in the heart of the Memphis Medical District. The new campus will integrate research, teaching and biomedical development.

The implosion of the tower is the culmination of a year-long demolition project that has included the removal of a four-story service building, an eight-story dormitory, and a 10-story medical office and treatment facility.

"This will be an exciting moment for Memphis," said Dr. Steven J. Bares, executive director and president of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation. "Not only is this the largest implosion in the United States this year, but it also marks a significant step forward for the bioscience industry in Memphis. We are literally clearing the path for future growth."

Controlled Demolition, Inc. of Phoenix, Maryland, is responsible for the actual implosion and will use a carefully calculated amount of explosives to collapse the building at key structural points on six floors – ground, second, fourth, eighth, 12th and 16th. Once the charges are ignited, gravity will take over and cause the building to fall.

Clean up will begin immediately after the implosion and is expected to take 11 months to complete. The site will then be prepared for construction of the UT-Baptist Research Park.

New building construction will begin in the second quarter of 2006. Construction will begin first on a Regional Biocontainment Lab, which will consist of a suite of biosafety level (BSL) 2 and 3 laboratory modules, space for training, security, and substantial vivarium space. In addition, construction will begin on a new School of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which is adjacent to the new research park.

Completion of the research park is estimated to take ten years, and will be completed in six phases. The Foundation is executing a business plan that is leveraging Memphis' unique assets to fulfill the nation's need for an urban biotech research park. When completed, the entire development will provide $250 million in annual salaries for 5,000 new jobs and $2 billion in annual economic impact.

Memphis Bioworks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, was formed in early 2001 to establish the Memphis region as an internationally recognized center for biomedical technology. The foundation focuses on building infrastructure, developing the workforce and promoting entrepreneurship.

Baptist Memorial Health Care donated its property in the Medical Center to the Foundation for the site of the research park, the focal point of the biomedical and economic development. The research park, which will include an incubation program to develop new businesses in biotechnology, will be the centerpiece of a larger biomedical research and development center that extends from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on the west to Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare on the east.