McCarthy Gets Nod for $45M Expansion

ST. LOUIS—St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. has been selected as construction manager for the $45 million expansion of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center,  a not-for-profit research institute in Creve Coeur originally built by McCarthy in 2001. The 79,000-square-foot expansion will cost about $45 million and McCarthy will begin construction in early 2014 and shoot for a 2015 opening.

Plans call for building a three-story addition attached to the west side of the Danforth Center’s existing building, making room for more than 100 additional researchers. The center currently has 227 employees, including 172 scientists and staff, and attracts about $13 million in grants each year from many sources, including the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Agriculture. The new space will include flexible research laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment as well as core facilities and additional growth chamber space.