Amgen Plans Major Expansions : Biotechnology: The Thousand Oaks firm hopes to double its work force and space.

Amgen Inc., the hugely successful biotechnology company based in Thousand Oaks, hopes to double its 2,000-employee work force over the next five years as the company expands its operations.

The company’s plan, which also calls for doubling its 1 million square feet of local office and lab space, is an economic dream for a city already reaping the benefits of an employer that turned a profit of more than $357 million last year.

“Anyone who is lucky enough to have a company like Amgen in their community is really blessed,” Mayor Judy Lazar said. “They’re one of the reasons we have not felt the impact of the recession as other communities have. They’re a large part of the reason.”

Although Amgen offers no guarantees that it will double in size, Lazar said she is confident that the company will meet its ambitious growth projections.

“I think it’s quite reasonable,” Lazar said of Amgen’s expansion plans. “I certainly think they’re going to be here for a while.”

Councilman Frank Schillo is similarly confident in the biotechnology company.

“I think the growth projections match what they’ve been doing the last five years,” he said. “We’re very fortunate to have a top-500 company like this in the community, and one that is home-grown basically.”

Still, Amgen spokeswoman Kimberly Dorsey stressed that there are no guarantees that the company’s work force will increase to 4,000 by the end of the century, because of the changing economy and the highly competitive biotechnology market.

“But we think that’s a reasonable figure,” she said. “That’s what we anticipate. That’s what’s in our plan.”

Amgen officials will present the company’s five-year development and expansion plans to the City Council during a special study session Tuesday night at City Hall.

The company, which was founded in Thousand Oaks in 1980, now occupies a 95-acre site along Hillcrest Drive at the far west end of the city. Administrative, research and development facilities are housed in two dozen buildings on the site, including a new 120,000-square-foot research lab completed in April.

Amgen’s future plans call for adding several new buildings that would double its floor space to about 2 million square feet. The company plans to ask for zoning variances in order to meet all of its construction plans, officials said.

For example, Amgen wants to construct at least two buildings that would exceed the city’s 35-foot height limit. Company officials would like the new buildings to be three or four stories high.

“We need to be able to build taller buildings in the future,” said Ed Bjurstrom, Amgen’s director of engineering and construction. “Otherwise, we’re going to have a row of two-story buildings.”

Another proposal calls for closing off a section of Camino Dos Rios between Pauling Drive and De Havilland Drive. The street now bisects Amgen’s property.

Last week, a section of De Havilland Drive, which also ran through the company’s property, was permanently closed to through traffic.

Bjurstrom said this is in keeping with Amgen’s long-term development plans, which call for extensive landscaping on a large business campus to create a more relaxed environment for its employees.

“Right now we’re in an industrial park,” he said. “But as we build we want it to be something more like a university campus, with parks all around our buildings.”

Bjurstrom said the company also wants its complex to stand out.

“We want to develop the facility into the future crown jewel of Thousand Oaks,” he said.

Since 1980 when Amgen was first founded by a group of scientists in Thousand Oaks, the company has grown to become the largest independent biotechnology company in the world. Amgen’s sales totaled $1.1 billion in 1992 and are expected to increase by 10% to 15% this year.

Amgen has developed and marketed two successful drugs. The first was Epogen, which fights chronic anemia in patients with kidney disease. The second drug, Neupogen, spurs production of white blood cells that help cancer patients fight infections.

In biotechnology, scientists splice together genes--which contain the blueprint of most forms of life--to reproduce, or clone, substances in laboratories so they can be used to treat specific ailments.

In addition to its Thousand Oaks headquarters, Amgen has clinics as well as administrative and sales offices in Australia, Canada, China, Europe and Japan. The company employs about 800 people in these offices outside of Thousand Oaks.

Lazar said Thousand Oaks was a logical choice for the company’s headquarters.

“It’s an attractive and ideal place to work coupled with the fact that Thousand Oaks is an attractive and ideal place to live,” she said. “But then I’m a little biased.”

Lazar said she believes that the presence of Amgen in Thousand Oaks was a factor in Baxter Healthcare Corp. of Illinois deciding to build a laboratory here.

Baxter is now building the first phase of a 401,000-square-foot lab that will manufacture a blood-clotting protein. The lab is expected to create as many as 800 jobs over the next 10 years.

Thousand Oaks officials have been trying 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. The company closed its Newbury Park plant facility in 1991.