Feds approve funding for new CDC facility

FORT COLLINS — The Centers for Disease Control has received funding to start construction of a new $80 million facility at Colorado State University’s Foothills Campus. As planned, the CDC will replace a 36-year-old facility that houses the agency’s Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, which opened at the Foothills Campus in 1967.

“We’re very crowded and we’re limiting our research because it’s so crowded,´ said Mel Fernandez, deputy director for management of the Fort Collins division. “Really, we just need a new building.”

CDC officials expect the facility to open in 2006.

The existing CDC structure, which covers 31,000 square feet, was…