$15 million building at UK’s Coldstream to provide lab space for high-tech businesses
A collection of local leaders and business owners broke ground on Tuesday for a $15 million research building that is planned to attract and provide lab space to early stage high-tech companies looking to enter central Kentucky.
Construction for the new building, called The Core, is expected to be completed by early 2022. The two-story, nearly 40,000-square-foot building will be located in the University of Kentucky’s 735-acre Coldstream Research Campus off Newtown Pike. University officials said the building is made possible through a public-private partnership with the Woodbury Cooperation, a commercial real estate company which is developing the building.
At a site that is both close to the city and the interstate, The Core will provide much-needed wet lab space — basically a lab where products that may have a sort of chemical property can be developed, said George Ward, executive director of the Coldstream Research Campus.
Kentucky Technology, Inc., a subsidiary of the UK Research Foundation, will function as the “anchor tenant” of the facility and will master lease the ground floor of the building and will sublease that space as other companies move in, said Ward, who is also the president of KTI.
The facility will hopefully attract other businesses to the state while also bringing in startup companies already being incubated at UK, Ward said.
“We have an on-campus incubator that has 20 startup companies, most of them that use wet lab space,” Ward said in an interview ahead of the groundbreaking. “If they find success, it’s difficult for them to find the next place to grow their business. And we’re hoping that this building will be able to fill that void.”
The Coldstream campus will also receive a state-created, city-supported $500,000 matching grant to develop lab space in the building, a UK release stated.
Growing jobs around Lexington will be key to opening and expanding the local economy even as the pandemic has taken a toll, said Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton at the groundbreaking. Gorton said the county’s unemployment rate in April 2020 was 14.1 percent and has since fallen to 4.5 percent last month.
“There’s of course still more work to do,” Gorton said. “And along with our many partners, I’m hoping that some of that work will happen right here in new lab space for new, high-tech businesses that will create jobs.”
The UK Board of Trustees first approved the project in February 2020 and the university sent out a request for proposal for the project. Ward said the university received a request from the Woodbury Cooperation and were interested in part because the company had done other work at research parks for other universities.
“Woodbury Corporation is honored to bring its 100-year history in commercial real estate to work with the University of Kentucky on the Coldstream Research Campus, and provide a home for Kentucky Technology, Inc.,” said Rick Woodbury, chairman of Woodbury Corporation, in a statement. “Like other research parks that we partner with, we foresee continued growth and success at this campus that will surely establish it as the premier location for technological innovation in the region.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2021 at 4:10 PM.