Marie Macklin CBE today (Friday 14th May) welcomed Barclays to Kilmarnock to show her special guests where the Barclays Eagle Lab will be located at the HALO Enterprise and Innovation Centre (HEIC) when it opens this summer and to discuss Thriving Local Economies.
The HALO Kilmarnock is set to become home to the newest in the UK-wide network of Eagle Labs business incubators run by the HALO’s platinum partner, Barclays.
Crawford Gillies, Barclays Chairman of UK Operations, and David Morrison, Barclays, Area Business Manager, visited the HALO to see the location for Scotland’s third Eagle Lab and the first to be located outside a major city. It will occupy 15,500sq ft of the 46,000sq ft HEIC, with 110 desks providing co-working space for start-up businesses.
The Eagle Lab will be regularly staffed by three to four Barclays employees, but firms will also have access to the bank’s wider network of start-up specialists. It will also support businesses from across the community, not just those directly associated with the HALO with the stated aim of rebuilding a thriving local economy.
Kilmarnock is one of four locations in the Barclays Thriving Local Economies growth initiative. As part of the three-year pilot project, Barclays is working with the local authority, education and businesses groups such as HALO to support economic growth and improve skills and training.
Marie Macklin CBE, Founder and Executive Chair of the HALO, said: “I was really pleased to be able to invite the team from Barclays to the HALO today to see how construction is progressing at the HALO and to give them the full guided tour of the building.
“Barclays are a key partner key in our overall vision for what we are trying to achieve at the HALO and their experience and expertise will play a key role in the success of the project.
“The HALO and Barclays both believe that local towns and communities will have a big part to play in the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
With a vision for a dynamic commercial, educational, cultural, leisure and lifestyle quarter where people can ‘Live, Work, Learn and Play’, The HALO will provide a sustainable community approach to a mixed-use development powered by electricity with a net zero carbon footprint.
The HALO will be the first 23-acre net zero carbon energy “Community Urban Village”, setting the standard for low carbon energy sites across the UK. The development will provide a sustainable community approach to a net zero carbon mixed-use development providing jobs, economic growth, skills development, access to employment opportunities, clean energy and housing.