PRIME Research to triple footprint in former Borders building downtown

Though many were sad to see Borders exit their State St. location, there's reason for cheer again as another high tech company has signed on to help refill the key downtown building. Germany-based PRIME Research plans to expand their North American headquarters into a 16,000 square foot, second-floor space this year.  "We have grown out of it," says PRIME Research North America's Julie Myers-Beach of the company's current, 5,000 square foot Ashley St. location. "We're about as close together as we can be." Myers-Beach says the company is eager to get into the new space, which is now undergoing significant renovations, including a new elevator.  "They'll be putting in windows," says says. "Along the side of Maynard and Liberty, it will be almost all windows. They're also adding additional bathrooms and updating the stairway. They're doing a lot of infrastructure work to the building." PRIME Research hopes to move into the new space in June, in advance of the Ann Arbor Art Fair According to Myers-Beach, the location was ideal for the company, which chose the State Street location for one of the same reasons it chose Ann Arbor as its headquarters in 2004. "We really like being so close to the University of Michigan, because we do hire quite a few students here," says Myers-Beach. "We wanted to be close to the universities, and, at the beginning, we were almost predominantly auto clients, so we wanted to be close enough to Detroit."  The staff of PRIME Research's Ann Arbor location has grown from 42 employees to 80 over the past year. Myers-Beach says she expects that growth to continue in the new space as the company hopes to expand into new markets, such as the hospitality sector.  Source: Julie Myers-Beach, PRIME Research North America Writer: Natalie Burg, Development News Editor