CORBIN — By Carl Keith Greene | Staff Writer

It’s BIG and Kentucky Highlands is opening it Thursday.

The new business accelerator/incubator will open to the public for tours from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday.

The Business Innovation and Growth Center alongside the KHIC office at 440 Old Whitley Road, (KY 1006) south of KY 192, is intended to provide a facility for businesses to use in developing and accelerating their growth.

It covers 9,600 square feet and is built to the standards of LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design).

The BIG Center’s facilities include affordable work areas, flexible office space, wet and dry labs, product development space, conference facilities, on-site training, business coaching, shared technology and access to capital.

There will be room for startup or expanding companies willing to locate in the BIG facility.

KHIC’s Jim Carroll said the center is intended to help entrepreneurs with programs and training, develop their business process toward self-sustainability and building an entrepreneurial community.

It will take three to four years for the typical company development process to be completed, he said.

The new structure has grown from a business incubator that KHIC established in its basement several years ago.

By business incubator the company means it addresses the needs of new businesses by coaching them through the needs, processes and development of new businesses.

The programs of the incubator include teaching, training and networking opportunities.

Business owners often think they are the only ones with problems and when, through networking, they meet fellow business owners with similar experiences collaboration can lead to solutions to those problems being shared.

Coaching includes individualized consulting to meet the business owners needs at that particular time.

They get the help they need and don’t have to wait for the classroom training to happen.

The business incubator was funded with $1.08 million from the federal Economic Development Administration, a $300,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional commission, a $500,000 loan from Jackson Energy Cooperative and $100,00 loan from the Kentucky Department of Commercialization and Innovation.

KHIC was founded in 1968 to stimulate economic growth in nine counties in the area. Today it serves 22 counties and has created more than 10,000 jobs.

For more information go to www.khic.org.

The new Business Innovation and Growth Center soon opening alongside Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation in London qualifies for the Silver designation by Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED).

LEED was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to provide building owners with a concise way to identify and use practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

In LEED 100 base points are counted plus extra points for innovation and design and regional priority.

KHIC’s building falls into the Silver area which counts for 50 to 59 points.

The lowest level is Certified with 40 to 49 points, the Gold with 69 to 79 points and Platinum 80 points and more.

Jerry Rickett, president and CEO of KHIC said Friday there are other structures in the area, noting Berea College, that rank even higher in LEED than the new BIG building.

“To go higher,” said Rickett with a grin, “you have to be able to cook food on your roof.”

Rickett explained the process of qualifying for LEED.

“You want to minimize the footprint of your effect on the environment. So we built a 9,600 foot building on one acre. When you build two stories you cut in half your footprint and your roof and all those sorts of things.”

He said the building was built of materials that have come from within 500 miles of London. “You get points for buying locally. The brick came from Stanton.” He said it was the brick nearest to London that matched the brick in the KHIC’s existing building.

The structure is built with insulated concrete forms, 2.5 inches of styrofoam on either side of poured concrete around a one-foot square re-bar grid inside.

“It super-insulates it and it makes it impermeable by wind.”

He added, “You buy good quality windows. The windows open at the floor level. They will exhaust out the top of the building. About a hundred days a year you don’t need mechanical heating and cooling by just using natural convection.”

The roof is a clear span roof. It is a 50-foot wide metal building sitting inside the concrete and styrofoam structure.

“You over-build that so that in the future, when different kinds of solar panels or other new technologies come along, we can accommodate them without spending more money. The time to do it is when you are building.”

The roof is designed so that future equipment can be clamped to it.

Below the roof, he said, “The exterior walls are made of structured insulated panels give you a really good insulation. That’s a 7.5-inch wide panel of styrofoam that has an inch of strand-board on either side.”

That gives an impermeable shield from outside weather.

Windows in interior room walls allow light from the exterior windows to enter those rooms and save electricity as do light switches designed to turn off the lights once the room is empty.

Electric lights are also designed to reflect more light into the rooms to save power.

The parking spaces are designed to be environmentally friendly.

Even though the front lot is concrete, it is designed so that rain will soak through directly into the ground, with no need for drains in the lot or ways to direct it into ditches and away from the building.

The parking lot in the rear is also set up that way, but the only difference is that there will be no concrete and the water will drain directly through the tiny gravel on the surface, the same gravel and draining system that lies just below the special concrete poured in front of the building.

And finally to earn extra LEED points a place for storage of bicycles for those who may ‘cycle to the building

Carl Keith Greene can be reached at cgreene@thetimestribune.com