Arnie Caine, the company's executive director of facilities and engineering, said the plan is to erect a one-story structure with 47,000 square feet of space which, together with playground, employee parking spaces and approaches, will occupy 6.3 acres. "That is not the ideal design; that is the compressed version," he said.

Positioning a transparent overlay at various places on a plot plan of the company's present and expended office and laboratory complex during a meeting on Dec. 22, Caine demonstrated that the planned structure literally does not fit anywhere if a permanent water collection pond is placed at the southern end of the Blue Ball Triangle site as state officials have proposed.

Some of the meeting attenders questioned that and New Castle County Councilman Robert Weiner proposed that Astra Zeneca submit to an evaluation of its conclusion by a set of county engineers and architects engaged by two of the private conservation groups which have objected to the idea. "I just want to get a second opinion," he said.

Caine agreed, albeit reluctantly and with the proviso that "we are not going to let [county engineers] design our [child]-care."

He rejected suggestions by state Senators Dallas Winslow and Harris McDowell that a multi-level facility would serve just as well. Winslow noted that M.B.N.A. Bank has such a unit in its downtown Wilmington office complex. "We have evaluated that with our consultant and we don't want to build a multi-story [facility]," Caine said.

"In a sense, this is all arbitrary," said state Representative Joseph DiPinto. He suggested that the day-care building could be accommodated elsewhere on Astra Zenca property if its shape or positioning on the proposed plot were not fixed in advance. A predetermined layout, as depicted on the overlay, "doesn't give you the flexibility in size and fitting that you need," he added.

Representative David Ennis cautioned against concentrating state resources to meet Astra Zeneca's needs on the west side of Concord Pike.. "No one has ever told us the total budget. If you chew up all the money on the west side and leave nothing for the east side, we will have a tremendous gap," he said. An active-recreation complex, including subsidized expansion of the Rock Manor golf course, is planned for the half of the state-owned Blue Ball acreage lying east of the highway and south of Foulk Road.

Secretary of Transportation Anne Canby, who conducted the meeting, said, "An answer needs to be found to address [this] situation so we don't lose open space and we don't lose any of the jobs we worked so hard to attract to Delaware."

McDowell, however, questioned whether there might be an "intentional incremental expansion of plans" concerning both the overall Blue Ball project and Astra Zeneca's expansion. "The community keeps getting asked to [agree to] changes without ever getting anything back. ... The roads ended up [in the master plan] exactly as they were in your department's files 16 years ago. I don't hear anyone suggesting maybe that we might eliminate [building] a new [Route] 141," he said.

Astra Zeneca vice president Anthony Felicia strongly objected to any implication that modifications have been one-sided. "We've been asked to make incremental changes too. The original 80 acres turns out to be 39 acres of developable land. ... We have had to make all kinds of tweaks," he said.

Astra Zeneca has said that it is willing to swap part of its Blue Ball Triangle land for equivalent space in the conservation area south of Rockland Road, which is where the pond is slated to go according to a master plan made public in November. Delaforum revealed the possible exchange was in the works after probing what occurred at a closed-door session on Dec. 13 at which it was disclosed to the lawmakers. State law requires that ad-hoc and advisory committees dealing with public business do so in open session except in certain limited circumstances.

At the Dec. 20 meeting, which was open to the public, Mark Chura, the state Division of Parks & Recreation official leading the process for designing the conservation area as well as a new state park and an historic enclave, disclosed that the idea of moving the pond across Rockland Road to the Astra Zeneca site has been in the offing since July.

Part of the agreement under which Astra Zeneca agreed to consolidate its North America operations in Brandywine Hundred called for the state would provide not only the land on which to expand but also to handle and pay for the stormwater drainage requirements associated with the corporate development.

Joseph Wutka, of the Delaware Department of Transportation, said it was determined that a large kidney-shaped basin north of Rockland Road not only would be cheaper to construct than the originally intended model -- $2.5 million versus $5.5 million -- but also hold more water and, by better managing its collection and discharge, provide the key ingredient for resurrecting what Chura described as "a dead stream" -- Alapocas Run. At a minimum, the reservoir must be capable of holding 16 acre-feet of water, Wutka said. The relocated one could hold as much as 30 acre-feet. An acre-foot is a pond covering that area to a depth of one foot; any proportionate variation on that ratio, within reason, would apply.

Caine said that would be fine with Astra Zenca and that the reservoir could fit reasonably comfortably just south of and downhill from the fifth and last building in a sequence of L-shape office structures the company intends eventually to build. However, he said, the state came to the company at a time when it had decided to add the child-care facility to serve 380 to 400 children of  employees with a staff of about 120. He said having one is now necessary to attract and retain workers in a competitive employment environment in the pharmaceuticals industry.

Providing for child care, he said, would necessitate a change in the design of the office buildings, essentially reducing the last one to about half its originally intended size and adding a sixth floor to the two buildings preceding it. He said neither the company nor the surrounding community would be happy if the structure grew to seven or more stories.

Caine said Astra Zeneca management has decided that the child-care unit should be ready to go into operation in September, 2002. The company plans to begin moving workers into its expanded facilities the previous month and to complete occupancy of the first phase of the two-phase project by the end of that year.

Councilman Richard Abbott questioned whether that timetable is realistic in view of the fact that seeking to construct additional facilities will require rather extensive county review and approvals before any construction can begin. "The [Blue Ball] Triangle already is maxed out under the [Unified Development] Code," he said. Normally, the review and approval process can take anywhere from six months to a year. Caine said it will take a year to construct the child-care building.

Further down the road, Ronald McDonald House is eyeing the Blue Ball conservation area as a potential location for a bigger facility. The present house, on the north side of Rockland Road and recently expanded to 27 bedrooms from 17, provides overnight accommodations for families of children hospitalized at the Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children and Christiana Care's units.

Although Ben Smith, a McDonald House official, told the meeting that lack of room has forced the turning away of about 100 groups seeking lodging in recent months and that some of those who could not afford to stay in area motels opted to spend the nights in their automobiles, he said planned expansion lies beyond the point when Astra Zeneca wants its child-care unit operating.

Smith also said that the Nemours Foundation, which owns and runs the children's hospital, has "dogmatically" rejected the idea of providing room on its property for any facility run by another agency. He also said that replacing the present McDonald House with a larger one is preferable to having two smaller facilities at separate locations. "When you have two offices, whatever you need is always in the other office," he said.

Canby called another meeting for just after the turn of the year, which is to be an executive session closed to the public, to discuss the possibility of the state acquiring additional property in the Blue Ball area as an alternate location for Astra Zeneca child care away from the conservation area. She said that secrecy is necessary to avoid escalating the cost of such acquisition.

"No decisions will be made [then] and there will be plenty of opportunity for public participation before any are," she said.