Last Thursday, Economic Development Director Bruce Carpenter made a presentation to the Corbin Rotary Club where he updated club members on a number of recent and upcoming projects.
Regarding the ongoing expansion project at the Corbin Center, located near I-75 Ext 25 in South Corbin, Carpenter said, “The mayor [Suzie Razmus] and I sat down with Senator [Robert] Stivers and other legislators, we were able to receive some funding to expand the Corbin Center. When I took that over about six years ago now, one of the things was the about five acres sitting there adjacent to the Center that I always felt would be a great opportunity for a conference or convention center.”
Carpenter explained that the facility currently comprises about 19,000 square feet. He said the expansion will add on another 15,000 square feet, and will add another large gathering room that will be able to hold about 500-520 people in a banquet-type setting. Similar to the large gathering room that already exists at the facility, the new room will be able to be divided into quarters to accommodate smaller crowds if necessary.
“It gives us a lot of opportunity,” Carpenter said of the expansion. “With the hotel next door, now that that’s opened, the whole plan was always to have that in conjunction with our conference center. When completed, there will be a covered walkway adjoining the two. It makes it very nice for conferences and conventions.”
Carpenter said that he has already started receiving bookings for future events, including a large conference that is being scheduled for 2027. He said that the current target completion date for the expansion is sometime near the end of July or first of August.
New spec building nearing completion
Carpenter also used his presentation to offer an update on the newest spec building in the Southern Kentucky Business Park.
This is a 101,000 square foot building, which is the largest that has been built in the industrial park to-date.
“Every spec building that we’ve built previously has been in the 60,000 square foot range, and all buildings are built to be expandable,” Carpenter explained. “When we designed and built this [building], we built it with two things in mind. We get more and more requests for larger buildings, so this building could expand out to between 120-150,000 square feet.”
Carpenter also said that there is another roughly 80,000 square foot pad nearby that is ready to be built on. “The thinking on that was that, if a company came in needing 100,000 square feet for manufacturing, and an additional space for distribution and warehousing, we have that there,” he explained. “Or we can sell them separately.”
Carpenter explained that a spec building is basically just a shell of a building, which gives companies a roughly 9-10 month head start as opposed to the time that it takes to build something from the ground up before they can move in. He said that there is probably one more location in the industrial park where a 100,000 square foot building could be erected, but that there would be quite a bit of site work involved.
Carpenter also mentioned that he has been working with the Knox County Fiscal Court and 86th District Rep. Tom O’Dell Smith in the planning of a new industrial park on a roughly 1,500 square foot property in western Knox County. He said that the new development is in the design phase, and that work is being done to secure funding for the installation of necessary infrastructure.
