A New York real estate firm has paid $21 million for the Implus Building, a 309,000-square-foot industrial property near Research Triangle Park in Durham.

Broadstone Real Estate of Rochester was the buyer.

The seller was The Keith Corporation, which built the property at 2001 T.W. Alexander Drive in 2009.

Chris Norvell, Rob Cochran and David Finger of Cassidy Turley represented Keith in the transaction.

The property is the headquarters and global distribution hub for Implus Footcare. The company's current lease runs through August 2024.

A year after buying a Nortel Networks business unit in Research Triangle Park, a Texas technology company is doing philanthropy to mark the anniversary of the acquisition that saved several hundred jobs in the Triangle.

Genband, which acquired 500 Nortel employees in the deal, is dedicating Wednesday to public service and volunteerism to commemorate its $282 million acquisition of Nortel's CVAS unit. The techno-acronym stands for Carrier VoIP and Applications Solution.

To date more than 200 Genband workers at RTP have signed up for eleemosynary projects with Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank of Central Eastern N.C. and local Red Cross branches. That's over 40 percent of the local workforce.

IBM, which employs about 10,000 people at its Research Triangle Park campus, is laying off some employees here and in Charlotte, according to a labor union trying to organize IBM's workers.

"We are hearing of job cuts that started yesterday at IBM at two divisions -- Systems Technology Group and Global Technology Services," said Lee Conrad, national field coordinator of Alliance@IBM.

In addition to Charlotte and RTP, the layoffs are occurring at IBM facilities in New York, Georgia, California and Rochester, Minn., Conrad said.

Conrad said his group doesn't yet know the extent of the cuts in North Carolina or elsewhere.

Syngenta Biotechnology will invest $71 million constructing a new research complex at its Research Triangle Park campus.

The company, a division of Swiss agribusiness company Syngenta, chose RTP over sites in China, Singapore and Brazil. The expansion will add 15 employees to Syngenta’s existing RTP workforce of 400.

Officials announced the decision today during an industry symposium held at the N.C. Biotechnology Center in RTP.

Syngenta chose RTP because of North Carolina’s business climate and the support it received from local and state officials, said Michiel van Lookeren Campagne, the company’s president.

Last week, Durham County commissioners approved giving the company up to $225,000 in incentives to help win the expansion. The state provided no incentives, but Commerce Department officials were actively involved in recruiting the company.

Rick Weddle said he was recruited for half a dozen jobs in the past year before accepting a position as a top economic development recruiter for the Orlando region.

The Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission announced last week that it has hired Weddle, poaching one of the Triangle's best-known business recruiters and cheerleaders.

Weddle has been the CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation, which oversees Research Triangle Park, since 2004. While he said he will miss this region, he's eager to tackle a new opportunity.

He spoke by telephone from his home in Cary. Here are some highlights from that interview:

IBM, one of the Triangle’s largest employers, is instituting another round of layoffs across its North American operations.

The extent of the cuts in this region is not clear. New York-based IBM employs about 10,000 people at its Research Triangle Park campus.

The layoffs began Thursday morning and affect employees within IBM’s Global Business Services division, according to a labor union trying to organize IBM’s workers.

“Right now we’ve got probably about 250 people we know were cut; we expect that number to climb,” said Lee Conrad, national field coordinator of Alliance@IBM.

Research Triangle Park's top pitchman is going to Disney World.

Rick Weddle, who has run the Research Triangle Foundation since 2004, has quit to become CEO of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission.

Weddle is expected to start in Orlando on March 14. He and his wife Ginger will relocate to central Florida from Cary.

Liz Rooks, the RTP foundation's executive vice president, will take over as interim CEO. The foundation oversees the 7,000-acre RTP and is in the process of updating the park's master plan.

Biotechnology company Biogen Idec outlined plans for a new 180,000 square foot building in Research Triangle Park in a regulatory filing earlier this month.

The company said it plans to consolidate all of its North Carolina administrative and patient services under one roof in a building to be constructed on its RTP campus.

The company could occupy the new building as early as the middle of next year, it wrote in its filing.

Biogen declined to comment beyond what it said in its regulatory filing.

Biogen owns roughly 550,000 square feet of office, warehouse, manufacturing and lab space in RTP. It also leases 50,000 square feet of office space in Durham.

The Massachusetts-based company announced in November that it would revamp its research efforts and eliminate 13 percent of its work force.
 

GlaxoSmithKline is eliminating an undisclosed number of research and development jobs in Research Triangle Park.

The job losses are part of reductions in GSK's Neurosciences Medicine Development Center. 

The total job cuts in the U.S. are fewer than 50 with less than half of those located in RTP, said Melinda Stubbee, a spokeswoman.

The rest of the cuts are at various clinical trial sites in the U.S., but not at the company's R&D facilities in the Philadelphia area.

GSK empoys about 4,000 people in RTP.

The company made an internal announcement about the job cuts on Monday.

Drug company United Therapeutics reported strong revenue growth in the fourth quarter thanks to an increase in patients being prescribed its drugs.

Revenues in the fourth quarter were $166.5 million, up 52 percent from the same period the prior year.

Revenue for the year was 603.8 million, compared to $369 million in 2009.

Annual earnings per share were $1.89, which was below the consensus among Wall Street analysts.

The company's stock was trading at $67.33 this afternoon, down 20 cents for the day. The shares are up 12 percent over the last year.

United Therapeutics is based in Maryland but employs more than 100 people in Research Triangle Park, where it opened a research and manufacturing facility in early 2009.