NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Jackson Laboratory has bought a building on a 17-acre property in Ellsworth, Me., located a few miles from its main campus in Bar Harbor for an undisclosed sum.
Jackson Lab said yesterday that it now will undertake a process to determine which of its operations it plans to move into the 143,000 square-foot facility, which previously housed a Lowe's building supply store.
Jackson's Senior Facilities Director John Fitzpatrick said it will be a few years before the lab's employees are working at the site.
"Buying this building will enable us to expand our operations in a modular fashion more quickly, more sustainably, and more cost-effectively than constructing new facilities," Fitzpatrick said in a statement.
Some of the employees who will work at the Ellsworth facility will be those who currently work at Bar Harbor, and others will be new workers.
The new facility is the latest among Jackson Lab's efforts to expand its operations.
Last month it announced a $27 million expansion of its Jax-West facility in Sacramento. It also is building the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, a $1.1 billion project in Connecticut that will collaborate with researchers from the University of Connecticut and Yale.