By Kristy Dorsey Kilmarnock’s Halo regeneration project is set to become home to the newest in the UK-wide network of Eagle Labs business incubators run by banking group Barclays. Scheduled to open in May within the Halo Enterprise and Innovation Centre (HEIC), which is currently under construction, it will be 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 three-year agreement marks another milestone in the £63 million Halo project, a plan hatched by local businesswoman Marie Macklin after Diageo announced in 2009 that it would close down its Johnnie Walker bottling plant in the Ayrshire town. That led to the loss of 700 jobs and left behind an abandoned 23-acre site where Halo is now in the midst of an extensive building programme.