ArcBest's plans to buy land for new headquarters OK'd

FORT SMITH -- The Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority voted Monday to approve a memorandum of understanding with ArcBest Corp. for the purchase of 30 acres of land at Chaffee Crossing on which the company plans to build a new corporate headquarters.

ArcBest Vice President Walter Echols said during the meeting at the authority's office that ArcBest expects to buy another 10 acres at the site within a year of signing a purchase agreement. He said he anticipated the purchase agreement to be signed in the next 45 days.

"We are excited about this," he said, "what this site will offer."

The memorandum of understanding, signed by Echols and the authority's executive director, Ivy Owen, on April 4, states that ArcBest will pay $10,000 an acre for the land.

In return, the authority will be responsible for providing water, sewer, natural gas, electric, fiber optic and data services to the site at no cost to ArcBest, according to the memorandum.

The authority and Fort Smith also will split the estimated $3.8 million cost of building two roads -- one 2,200 feet, the other 1,600 feet -- from the east side of the ArcBest campus to Wells Lake Road. A section of McClure Road provides access to the southwest section of the site.

Echols said multiple access points were a plus, because employees will come to work from every direction.

The authority approved an agreement with Fort Smith on the road project at Monday's meeting. Fort Smith city directors will take up ratification of the agreement today. According to the agreement, the authority will dedicate the land for the streets at no charge and the city will manage their design and construction.

Echols told the authority members that he expected about 600 administrative, call center and data-processing employees to move into the building in the first quarter of 2016. Over the next 10 years, he said, the company plans to add 900 more employees to its payroll.

He said he envisioned the building to be about 150,000 square feet in three or four floors atop a hill with open employee parking on the gentle slope to the east. The acreage would give the company room to expand, he said.

There will be no truck terminal or industrial component at the new headquarters, he said.

ArcBest has not hired an engineer or contractor for the project yet, so plans were still sketchy Monday, Echols said. He said a four- or five-person design committee of company officers will make recommendations to him on design features.

ArcBest has not developed an estimate on the cost of building the new headquarters.

The additional 10 acres, which is off the southeast corner of the site along what will become the McClure Road extension, would be used to build an additional office building, if needed. He said the company also could use it for commercial development for restaurants and shops to serve employees, much as it has at the current site.

The Cornerstone shopping center in Fort Smith has three restaurants, a dry cleaner, doctor's office, hair salon and company store.

"Whatever we do there will be a positive complement to your development," he told the authority's board.

The new building has been needed for years, Echols said. The company long ago outgrew the building it moved into at 3801 Old Greenwood Road in 1994. The company has smaller offices scattered all over town, which hampers employee coordination and communication.

The current site is 43 acres, he said, but ArcBest has little room for expansion because agreements with residential neighbors to provide green-space buffers have made development on much of the land unfeasible

The area ArcBest picked for its new headquarters has only begun to be developed in the past few years. Chaffee Crossing, which spans 7,000 acres, is Fort Chaffee land the Defense Department declared surplus in the 1990s as part of the Base Realignment and Closure program, which aimed to return unwanted military land to civilian use.

Residential neighborhoods are springing up below the hill to the west of the ArcBest site. Land has been purchased at nearby street intersections that developers want to turn into commercial areas. A new Fort Smith fire station opened in February at Chaffee Crossing less than a mile from the ArcBest site. And the site overlooks Umarex, Mars Petcare and Graphic Packaging plants to the east.

The site also will border a Sebastian County regional park walking trail and is near the Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center

Business on 06/03/2014

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