YBI Seeks 5th Building for Expansion
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A planned fifth building on the Youngstown Business Incubator campus would provide additional incubation space YBI officials say they need as well as space for advanced manufacturing equipment.
YBI officials confirm the old Vindicator building downtown, adjacent to the buildings on the existing YBI campus, as the intended property for the proposed expansion.
“We’re out of space. We definitely need to open a fifth building. Actually, we need to start planning for our sixth building,” Jim Cossler, YBI‘s CEO and chief evangelist. “We’re really kind of crowded to the walls right now.”
YBI is out of space for graduates of the main program to grow into, affirmed Barb Ewing, YBI’s chief operating officer. All of the Taft Technology Center and the Semple Building is under lease and America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, occupies YBI‘s East Boardman Street building.
“Our model for incubation is different from any other incubator that we’re aware of,” Ewing says. “We never want to graduate our companies out of our campus. We want them to graduate out of our program, we certainly want them to enter the market and become very successful, but we want them then to become tenants in our space, both so we can leverage the resources that they bring to bear in terms of paying rent and any other fees associated with the occupancy but also so that we can continue to leverage their expertise.”
Additionally, she said, YBI is in a position to attract companies to the region but is unable to because it can’t accommodate them in its existing space.
“This space will allow us to not only graduate companies into it and help them accelerate into the marketplace but it will also allow for us to expand our programming into advanced manufacturing,” she added. “The building is really perfect. It’s a combination of both office space on the upper floors and the lower space because it has the production facilities will allow us to put advanced manufacturing equipment or other types of equipment into it for advanced manufacturing programs.”
YBI has requested $5 million in state capital funds for the project, which Ewing estimates will cost about $6 million “when all is said and done.” Acknowledging that “you don’t always get everything you ask for,” she said the project can be done in phases.
“You know we like to move quickly so our goal is to is to have at least a portion of the building ready for occupancy by the end of the year,” if the project moves forward, she said
“Yesterday would be the ideal time in the new space,” Cossler remarked. “Realistically, going through the funding process and the design process and permitting process, I’m confident we could begin on the building this year.” Optimistically, he estimated YBI could be in the new space first quarter 2015, though the second quarter is more realistic.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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