THOUSAND OAKS : Company Gets OK to Begin Building Lab

An Illinois-based medical manufacturer has been given the go-ahead by the Thousand Oaks City Council to build a huge laboratory that would manufacture a blood-clotting protein.

Baxter Healthcare Corp. Vice President John Bacich Jr. said the unanimous approval Tuesday night of an environmental report and grading plans for the company’s 401,000-square-foot facility means that work can begin this week.

The site for the proposed lab is owned by Shapell Industries, which is developing a 1,862-acre area formerly known as the MGM Ranch. The medical company plans to acquire the site within a month.

The company manufactures a protein used to treat patients who suffer from hemophilia, a blood disease.

Bacich said the laboratory will create as many as 800 jobs over the next 10 years. The first phase involves building an 82,000-square-foot laboratory, Baxter officials said. It is scheduled to begin construction early next year and to finish in two years.

Thousand Oaks officials have tried to woo private industry to the city since losing one of its major employers, the Northrop Corp., an aerospace company that employed 1,800 workers at its Newbury Park plant.