High-tech center plans unveiled
9/24/2008
By Keith Lawrence
Messenger-Inquirer
By next summer, the conversion of an 85-year-old former tobacco warehouse at 1016 Allen St. into the high-tech Centre for Business and Research should be complete.
And by 2010, work should begin on the next phase of Carnegie Village, a mixed-use development that will cover the block across the street -- bounded by Ninth Street, the CSX railroad tracks, Allen and Daviess streets -- Nick Brake, president of the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp., said Tuesday.
Daviess Judge-Executive Reid Haire told the crowd attending the announcement of the planned "urban village" that the city has committed more than $2 million to the project and Daviess Fiscal Court will kick in $500,000.
Brake said the section of Carnegie Village east of Allen Street will include a police training center, a three- to four-story apartment complex, restaurants, cafes and possibly a gallery/restaurant.
The apartments and restaurants will be designed to attract people who work at the Centre for Business and Research, he said.
Malcolm Bryant, who owns the 37,000-square-foot brick warehouse, said he began renovating it two months ago. Both the interior and exterior have been sandblasted and the wood inside looks new.
It will take six to nine months to turn the building into space for biotech labs and offices, he said.
Brake said his office is talking with several companies about leasing space in the building, but no leases have been signed.
Bryant said he plans to open up windows that have been covered over for decades, put solar panels on the roof and use wind energy to supplement electricity in the two-story building.
Half of the space is in the basement, but there are windows to light that space as well, he said.
Plans call for the Centre for Business and Research to include research space for biotech companies as well as office space for a "business accelerator," a place where new businesses can rent as much space as they need until they're ready to move out on their own.
Brake said EDC hopes the project "can be a catalyst for the creation of a pedestrian corridor along Allen Street linked to the central downtown district."
That doesn't necessarily mean that Allen would be closed to traffic, he said.
"I think it would be classified as a more pedestrian-friendly street, connecting the development to the core of downtown," Brake said. "As a result, the emphasis will be on walkability and residential development -- much of which already exists up and down Allen between Parrish and Fourth."
The research center is in the same block as the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, a block south of Brescia University and diagonally across the street from the planned JZ Moore Village shopping center.
Brake said the Centre for Business and Research is designed to attract jobs in the $35-an-hour range.
Madison Silvert, EDC's executive vice president, said he began working on the project when he joined EDC last October.
"Building from scratch would have cost five times as much" as renovating the old warehouse, he said.
Bryant said the renovations "won't cost as much as you think because the building's in great shape, but it won't be cheap."
He declined to say how much he plans to spend on the project.
"We've had our share of setbacks in the community," said EDC Chairman Darrell Higginbotham. "But I'm proud of where this community is going."
Brake said the warehouse is being redesigned to attract technology-based companies that will use it for research and incubator office space.
"Kentucky BioProcessing has run out of lab space," he said. "The companies they work with need lab space in Owensboro."
Between 5,000 and 8,000 square feet of the building will be devoted to labs.
Bryant said he's been told that the old warehouse was built in 1923 and that the address used to be 102-104 W. Ninth St.
A 1928 Owensboro City Directory in the Kentucky Room at the Daviess County Public Library shows Southwestern Tobacco Co. at 104 W. Ninth.
The warehouse has had a colorful past, serving as home to such nightspots as Rockafellas, Amnezia and The Underground, the YB Corral Western dance club and most recently, Common Ground, a Christian teen club.
