EchoCath’s New Heart Technology
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Peter J. Mladineo and Barbara Fox were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on
May 13, 1998. All rights reserved.
Life in the Fast Lane
Top Of PageForrestal Hotel Sold
Three years after Jorgen Roed sold his flagship Scanticon
conference center, it will be sold again, to CapStar Hotels, the third
owner in three years. If the purchase price is close to $60 million,
as has been suggested, the current owners will have nearly doubled
their money. The Amstar Group and Circa Hotel purchased the conference
facility in 1995 for $23 million plus $10 million in renovations.
Based in Washington, D.C., CapStar plans to spend $1.5 million to
update the Gratella restaurant and add additional phone lines to the
guest rooms. It is uncertain whether Benchmark Hospitality will continue
managing the 290-room hotel, because CapStar specializes in hotel
management.
CapStar is a $1.7 billion firm that trades as CHO on the New York
Stock Exchange, owns 56 hotels, and manages 87 hotels in 30 states,
two Canadian provinces, and the Caribbean. It is the nation’s largest
franchisee of Hiltons, Sheratons, and Westins.
Paul Whetsell, CapStar’s chairman and CEO, worked his way up through
the industry from a job as a front desk clerk. He founded the firm
as a management company in 1988, used a $50 million bankroll from
Acadia Partners to buy 12 hotels in 1995, and went public in August
1996, while still managing an additional two dozen hotels. CapStar
will merge with American General Hospitality Corp., a $1.4 billion
Dallas-based real estate investment trust.
It focuses most of its business on the coasts, plus in Texas and Chicago,
and it aims to be in larger urban centers “where the barriers
to new competition are the highest,” says David McCaslin, chief
operating officer. “The Forrestal is our first conference center
and its proximity to New York and Philadelphia as well as to corporate
headquarters make it an ideal location.”
Amstar bought Forrestal “at a time when there was limited interest
in the hotel market, whereas today there is great appeal in the investment
market,” says Kevin Mahoney, a senior investment manager for Amstar.
The proof is in the pudding. These new hotels are being added to the
Princeton market: A Homestead Village has received preliminary approval
for building 92 rooms north of QuakerBridge Mall on Route 1 North.
Extended Stay America is expected to open a 129-room hotel on Route
1 North at Raymond Road, opposite the Marriott’s Residence Inn in
early fall. Marriott’s 153-room Courtyard is being built at Route
1 South on Mapleton Road, on the site of what had been a Holiday Inn.
The Marriott may eventually add 100 rooms. Four more hotels —
for a possible total of 20 on Route 1 — have submitted plans for
approvals.
“It wasn’t difficult to get a lot of interest in the property
and they were the ones in the end in the winning position,” adds
Mahoney. “The market is very good if you’re a seller. If you’re
a buyer you need to be careful — because of the prices that are
being paid.”
The Forrestal Hotel and Conference Center, 100College Road East, Princeton 08540. Gerard Dumont, general manager.609-452-7800; fax, 609-452-2523.Top Of PageLockheed’s DealGMH Associates Inc. has bought Lockheed Martin’s satellitemanufacturing plant an Princeton-Hightstown Road for $12 million andwill convert it into an office park. After Lockheed finishes its lasttwo satellites here, it will transfer or lay off the remaining 250workers and vacate 300,000 square feet of high-bay manufacturing space.GMH will demolish that part of the plant but lease the 400,000 squarefeet of office and laboratory space.Based in Wayne, Pennsylvania, GMH Associates has the same owner asthe real estate company that has been trying to sell the site forthree years. As of this spring Aubrey Haines of GMH Realty, locatedat Princeton Crossroads, had listed the office and laboratory spacefor $20 per square foot gross, based on a minimum of 30,000 feet.GMH is separately marketing another 70,000 square foot office- lab-manufacturingbuilding on Old Trenton Road.Top Of PagePPPL: From Donut to SphereAfter years of budget cuts and layoffs, the PrincetonPlasma Physics Laboratory now has refocused its vision using a newset of goggles. A year after the closing of the beloved Tokamak FusionTest Reactor, which set a record in 1994 by creating 10.7 millionwatts of fusion power, the PPPL is beginning construction on a smaller,more flexible test reactor.On Monday, May 18, at 10 a.m. the lab will break ground for a testfacility, a “cell” that will house the National SphericalTorus Experiment (NSTX). The ceremony will also include the renamingof the PPPL’s main office building for the late Lyman Spitzer Jr.,the founding father of the Princeton University lab.Speakers include Congressmen Rodney Frelinghuysen and Mike Pappas,Princeton University president Harold Shapiro, and Doreen Spitzer,Spitzer’s widow. A colloquium is scheduled at 2 p.m. after the dedicationand groundbreaking. Call 609-243-3553 for more information.Both the NSTX and the TFTR have a hole in the middle, but the NSTXis shaped like a sphere as opposed to the donut-shaped TFTR. Likethe TFTR, the NSTX will produce a plasma — an extremely hot, ionizedgas in which nuclear fusion occurs. The lab hopes that the sphericalshape will enable a higher plasma pressure to be produced in a fieldwith a given magnetic strength, says PPPL spokesman Anthony R. DeMeo.Another enhancement is that, because of the reactor’s high pressure,the NSTX will able produce a high “bootstrap” electric current,a self-driven internal plasma current. This should significantly reducethe amount of power needed to confine the plasma. The NSTX will cost$23.8 million, and the components will be arriving at the lab shortly,with construction beginning in late summer. Tests should begin byApril, 1999, and run for six or seven years.The NSTX is a collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,the University of Washington at Seattle, and Columbia University.It could potentially become “the most powerful and extensivelydiagnosed” spherical torus fusion facility in the world by 2000.So far, smaller spherical toruses — or torii, as the scientistsrefer to them — have operated successfully enough to justify buildingthis larger spherical torus that can more thoroughly test its underlyingprinciples.”What we want to do is see whether those initial results can beexploited in a larger facility to determine if the reactor’s potentialreally exists,” says Richard J. Hawryluk (pronounced like “garlic”),the PPPL’s deputy director and former head of the TFTR project.The NSTX is a “proof-of-principle” test, which means thatthe lab wants to prove the integrity of the physics behind the sphericaldesign. Unlike the tokamak, which used non-radioactive deuterium andradioactive tritium, the NSTX will use only deuterium. This givesit a higher safety factor.Because the NSTX lacks tritium, though, it will not produce “anywherenear” the energy produced by the TFTR, says Hawryluk. But whatthe NSTX lacks in production capacity it will gain in added flexibility.Without the radioactive elements, components of the machine will bemore easily removed for repairs and upgrades. Plus, experiments willbe able to be re-tailored in mid-stream.If this experiment pans out, then a larger, “proof-of-performance”experiment would be built. This next phase, still short of commercialenergy production, might even use deuterium and tritium and deliverfusion amounts equal to the TFTR. “It would be closer to a commercial-sizedreactor,” says DeMeo.The ultimate goal of the international fusion effort is to commerciallyproduce energy using nuclear fusion, the power harnessed by stars.Founded in 1951, Princeton’s fusion laboratory existed for its firstsix years as a classified military experiment known as Project Matterhorn.Spitzer, who died in 1997, was director until 1961 and was involvedwith the PPPL until 1967.Spitzer is also credited with the 1946 proposal for the developmentof a large space telescope that eventually resulted in the launchof the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. It seems that some proposalstake longer than others to bear fruit.– Peter J. MladineoTop Of PageEchoCath’s New Heart TechnologyAnother Princeton area company making progress in hearthealth is EchoCath. In a press release dated Friday, May 8, the Route1 North-based medical device manufacturer announced that the efficacyof its blood-flow measurement system, EchoFlow, had been validatedin pre-clinical tests at the University of Louisville.EchoFlow is a tool to aid cardiovascular surgery: a sensor is placedon the surface of an artery where blood-flow velocity measurementsare taken and data about blockages in the artery can be collected.”The surgeons can use this to explore along the surfaces of anartery to choose where best to place the attachment of the bypass,the anastomosis,” says Frank A. DeBernardis, the president andCEO of EchoCath. “Secondly after you’ve done anastomosis and madethe bypass into an artery it helps to assess the procedure.He suggests that the device could be used on several types of arteriesand could also help to perform dialysis access grafts, as well asother applications. “One possibility is to make this into an implantablesensor so it could be a long-term monitor of the performance of bypassprocedures of arteries,” he says.The system was successfully tested on a carotid artery at Mt. SinaiHospital. The test at the University of Louisville saw the sensorplaced on a coronary artery of a beating heart. The positive resultswill allow EchoCath to receive roughly $315,000 in product developmentfunding per a licensing agreement with Medtronic, a Minneapolis-basedpartner. “This is multifaceted,” says DeBernardis. “It’sa core platform technology. What we’ve demonstrated is an epivascularapproach.”EchoCath Inc., 4326 Route 1 North, Princeton 08543-7224.609-987-8400; fax, 609-987-1019. E-mail: echocath@erols.com.Stock symbol: ECHTATop Of PageFinancial MovesChase Field LLC, 47 Hulfish Street, Suite 330,Princeton 08540. 609-430-9526; fax, 609-430-9529. E-mail: pjtray@aol.com.Venture capitalist Peter Travers opened an office in the Gallup buildingon Hulfish Street in February.Financial Planning Analysts Inc., 182 TamarackCircle, Skillman 08558. Lewis S. Arno, president. 609-497-1414; fax,609-497-9711.Lewis Arno moved his financial planning firm from 5 Vaughn Drive.Top Of PageCrosstown MovesCancer Care Inc., 353 Nassau Street, Princeton08540. Kathy Larkin LCSW. 609-924-8752; fax, 973-379-1082. Homepage: https://www.cancercare.org.This nonprofit agency moved from Herrontown Road to Nassau Streetin April. It provides aid for cancer patients and their families,and also has a location at 241 Millburn Avenue, Millburn 07041.Cancer Care’s services include counseling; financial disbursementsfor child care, home care, and housekeeping; transportation to chemotherapyand radiation treatment; and pain medications.Rhodes Educational Counseling, 353 Nassau Street,Princeton 08540. Daphne M. Rhodes, president. 609-683-0232; fax, 215-295-7199.E-mail: rhodesrec@aol.com.Daphne Rhodes moved her independent school and college admission counselingservice from 1000 Herrontown Road.Top Of PageLeaving TownHoechst Marion Roussel, 6 Neshaminy Interplex,Suite 110, Trevose, PA 19053. 215-633-8227; fax, 215-633-8257.The regional sales office for the pharmaceutical manufacturer hasmoved from Forrestal Village, and Mark Miles is now the regional director.Priority Systems, 134 Franklin Corner Road, Lawrenceville08648. 800-222-0811; fax, 732-563-1773.This employee assistance counseling office has closed and calls arebeing taken at Greenspring EAP, 8 Wood Hollow Road, Suite 200, Parsippany07054.Top Of PageMilestonesDeclared guilty: on two counts of criminal sexual contact,Edward McGinnis, formerly a physical therapist on Brunswick Pike.In a case involving five female patients the jury acquitted McGinnison six counts and deadlocked on 10.Sentenced: Developer Eric R. Keller, to 10 years of probationfor charges including third-degree theft of $102,771 from a Gallup/Laughlinfamily firm; defrauding of Princeton Capital Credit Partners by failingto return $26,250 of escrow; and for passing bad checks totaling morethan $15,000. The plea bargain includes 500 hours of community serviceand restitution of monies.Corrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
