COPT to Develop Second Building for bwtech@UMBC Research Park

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 12:00:00 -0400
ovpr-news-2006

110,000 Square-Foot Building to be Multi-Tenant Facility

UMBC's on-campus research and technology park, bwtech@UMBC, and Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) announced today that COPT will build and own a second building at the park.

The 110,000 square foot, four-story office building will located at 5520 Research Park Drive on ground leased from UMBC Research Park Corporation and will target large and small technology companies as tenants. The total construction cost of the project is projected to be approximately $22 million.

“We are very pleased to further our relationship with UMBC by being given the opportunity to develop a second building for their expanding research and technology park and to create more critical mass for COPT within the park,” said Randall M. Griffin, President and CEO of Corporate Office Properties Trust.

This building will be adjacent to a development project recently announced within bwtech@UMBC which is the 23,500 square foot new home for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Water Science Center located at 5522 Research Park Drive. This would bring COPT’s total square foot ownership in the park to 133,900 square feet.

bwtech@UMBC was Maryland's first university research park and is the only research and development park in Baltimore County. The 41-acre park's first building, completed in 2001, is occupied by RWD Technologies. A second building, completed in 2004, is fully leased.

About COPT:
Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) is a fully integrated, self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) that focuses on the ownership, management, leasing, acquisition and development of suburban office properties located primarily in submarkets within the Greater Washington, DC region. As of December 31, 2005, the Company owned 183 office properties totaling 14.6 million rentable square feet, which included 18 properties totaling 885,000 square feet held through joint ventures. The Company has implemented a core customer expansion strategy that is built around meeting, through acquisitions and development, the multi-location requirements of the Company’s existing strategic tenants. The Company’s property management services team provides comprehensive property and asset management to company owned properties and select third party clients.

COPT’s development and construction services team provides a wide range of development and construction management services for company owned properties, as well as land planning, design/build services, consulting, and merchant development to select third party clients. The Company’s shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol OFC. More information on Corporate Office Properties Trust can be found on the Internet at www.copt.com.

About bwtech@UMBC:
bwtech@UMBC is a 41-acre research and technology community at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). bwtech@UMBC has a total development capacity of up to 330,000 square feet of office and laboratory space. The USGS building will be the third of five planned state-of-the-art buildings containing over 300,000 square feet of office and wet lab space. The park’s 62,000 square-foot first building has been leased by the information technology firm RWD Technologies since 2001. The second building, a 60,000-square-foot multi-tenant building, is fully leased with tenants including The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center, software maker BD Metrics Inc., healthcare media and education firm Med-IQ, the Erickson School of Aging Studies at UMBC, the engineering/design firm Edwards & Kelcey, and UMBC’s Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship.

UMBC began planning for a new research and technology park in the early 1990s, based on the success of other U.S. parks and the vision of the late Michael Hooker, UMBC president from 1986-1992. To date, UMBC’s research park and technology incubator have received public and private sector funding from the Maryland Economic Development Corporation (MEDCO), the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, Baltimore County, the U.S. Department of Commerce, The Abell Foundation, and the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO.) bwtech@UMBC is part of Baltimore County's Southwest Enterprise Zone, making companies moving to the park eligible for credits on real property and income taxes, as well as credits for job creation.