Raytheon plans consolidation
$20M building will bring together 500 employees

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

By SHELBY G. SPIRES
Times Aerospace Writer shelbys@htimes.com

Fuqua & Partner Architects

A new building will allow Raytheon to consolidate most of its work in Huntsville into a single site.

Raytheon Co. will announce plans today for a $20 million building in Cummings Research Park that will consolidate operations in three facilities scattered around Huntsville.

The new facility will be situated on 20 acres in the park, at the corner of Old Madison Pike and Jan Davis Way. Construction will begin in February on the three-story, 140,000-square-foot facility that will house 500 Raytheon employees.

Raytheon employs more than 600 people at four facilities spread across Huntsville. The aerospace company plans to maintain its long-term lease for the 44,000-square-foot James Record Road production facility located near the Huntsville International Airport.

The new site should cut down on travel time to meetings and, Raytheon officials say, should increase productivity because a majority of engineers and managers will be on one site.

"It's much better from our perspective, and certainly from our customer's perspective also, when they have one building to go for meetings and consultations," said Raytheon's Huntsville Senior Vice President Tony Palumbo. "We want this to be the 'one-stop-shop' for our needs and the needs of our customers."

Raytheon performs engineering and management work on U.S. Army programs like the Patriot and Javelin missiles, along with sensor work on military space projects. It also provides engineering support work to NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center, Palumbo said.

Raytheon is making the investment in a new building not only to consolidate its operations, but also with an eye to the future, Palumbo said. "We bought 20 acres and have the option to expand our facility by adding a 110,000-square-foot building in the future if we need that," Palumbo said.

Raytheon divisions Raytheon’s seven business divisions, all of which are represented in Huntsville; Integrated Defense System – Headquarters in Tewksbury, Mass. Intelligence and Information Systems – Headquarters in Garland, Texas Missile Systems – Headquarters in Tucson, Ariz. Network Centric Systems – Headquarters in McKinney, Texas Space and Airborne System – Headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC – Headquarters in Reston, Va. Raytheon Aircraft Company – Headquarters in Wichita, Kan.

The building was planned before the Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended bringing several new commands and at least 4,000 new federal workers to Huntsville, including the headquarters of the Army Materiel Command now located in Arlington, Va.

"We went into the planning for this about a year ago, long before we knew what was going to be the outcome with BRAC," Palumbo said. "We are actually buying the property and building, and in many cases other companies do not do that. We plan to stay in this community, and this new facility is part of our commitment to Huntsville."

The new facility is being designed by Huntsville-based architect Fuqua and Partners and will be built by Huntsville-based Turner Universal, said Bob Demer, Raytheon's Huntsville director of operations.

"This type of building is really meant to be people friendly and efficient," Demer said. "We will have ergonomic designed furniture and it will be well lit. Also, it is designed to be energy efficient."