Construction work is under way at Boston Scientific's Maple Grove division headquarters on an 8,000-sf expansion of its south building and a 32,000-sf expansion of its north building, says Bob Waibel, Maple Grove's community development director. The two buildings total about 400,000 sf.

Meanwhile, Maple Grove city administrator Al Madsen confirms that Boston Scientific officials have been talking to him about plans for a two-story, 180,000-sf building on an adjacent site that is part of their campus. While the company confirms it plans to build a new research and development facility in the Twin Cities to support its anticipated expansion, it won't reveal the location and plans for the center until later this fall, says Paul Donovan, a spokesman for Boston Scientific.

The company has been looking at other locations, including existing buildings, in addition to the option of building a new center on its corporate campus, says Art Brown, a Minneapolis real estate broker who is working with the company on its search for a site.

The company's future hinges on the clinical results of trials for Boston Scientific's new drug-coated stent, a tiny metal mesh tube that keeps arteries open after they are cleaned out by angioplasty. The results will be reported Monday at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference in Washington, DC. If the device is shown to be comparable to Johnson & Johnson's drug-coated stent, the only such device on the US market, Boston Scientific could grab a major share of what is expected to grow into a $7.5 billion market for drug-coated stents.