Western center is helping businesses get on right track suppliers
July 13, 2003

Scott Sisco, The Daily New

After almost a year at Western Kentucky University's Center for Research and Development, Chris Mills thinks the Hitcents.com office is much better than the basement at his parents' house where the company started. "We love the center," he said. "We love the office."

Western is working to attract more businesses to the center, which has helped Hitcents flourish and made another tennant, Perot Systems Healthcare, consider expanding.

Chris Mills, along with his twin brother, Clinton, have held hundreds of meetings with clients in their office, something that they couldn't do while working out of a basement.

"Since we moved in here, we've been really utilizing the office," Chris Mills said.

The office has also allowed Hitcents to take on local clients.

"We're used to doing business with New York and California and never meeting the people," Chris Mills said.

Hitcents, which began by selling Internet advertising, has been working with places like Jackson's Orchard on E-commerce solutions.

The largest company in the center is the Perot. The company's insurance manager, Jim Pennington, was working at another facility in Bowling Green when he heard about Perot coming to the center.

"I went out of my way to learn as much as I could about Perot," he said.

The facility, which is in what used to be a Kroger store, has been remodeled.

"It's like coming to work in the 21st century," he said.

Mike Morris, project leader, spends his time among the corporate office in Dallas and the facilities in Nashville and Bowling Green. Perot employs about 130 people in Bowling Green now.

"We have the capacity to grow to about 375 associates," Morris said.

With additional contracts, that growth could happen. Perot also has an option to use additional space in the center to expand, he said.

Buddy Stein, executive director of the Central Region Innovation and Commercialization Center, has been working with several potential tenants for the center. He's been using his office in the center to meet with them, as well as traveling to meet with people who either already have a business or are thinking about starting one.

Right now, there are six formal ICC clients out of the 62 people Stein has had serious discussions with. Most clients are still working on a business plan, one of the first steps Stein takes them through to develop a company.

He said part of his job is finding resources for beginning companies.

"The center is a marvelous resource," he said.

A proposed network operations center could provide low-cost, high-quality resources to the companies in the center, Stein said.

"It becomes the business reason to locate to the center," he said.

The center has received part of the funding needed to start a business incubator for assisting startup companies, but it still lacks enough to start it. To locate in the center, companies would have to invest in renovations of space in the former Bowling Green Mall, said Ann Mead, Western's chief financial officer.

"We have this next group that - given that we don't have an incubator right now - would have to make some improvements," Mead said.

Stein and the center are still working with startup companies in the region, even if they aren't working out of the center.

"Some of these are working out of their spare bedrooms, some of them are working out of their garages," Mead said. "We're waiting for the right time to bring them into the center."

The center will also house some of Western's labs, including the Applied Physics Institute and the Materials Characterization Center. Space for these two centers is in the design phase, Mead said.

Kaveh Khatir, an engineering associate professor, will open the Center for Advanced Solar Sciences this fall in the building. Khatir, along with students from Western, will work on applications for solar energy conversion.

"Basically, it's an applied research laboratory," Khatir said.

The lab is set up, but because of continuing asbestos cleanup, Khatir can't get to it. It took about a year to renovate the space and to set up the equipment, he said. The center is funded through a grant from the Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation. The asbestos cleanup is expected to take several more weeks.

Mead is hoping that in less than two years, there will be a waiting list for businesses trying to get into the center.

"You've got to be able to look forward," she said.