The American Taekwondo Association will build a $13.5 million national headquarters at 1800 Riverfront Drive, the association said Monday.
Construction on the 45,300-square-foot headquarters is scheduled to begin Wednesday and be completed in August 2016. It will replace the association's current offices at 6210 Baseline Road.
"We are excited that this will be a very iconic world headquarters that hopefully Little Rock will be proud of," Ed Wright, chief executive for the American Taekwondo Association, said.
The announcement comes as the the city gears up for about 20,000 visitors coming to the American Taekwondo Association World Exposition. The association estimates that this year the expo will bring $6 million to Little Rock and its suburbs.
Little Rock's Statehouse Convention Center will host the expo July 8-12. The expo will continue being held at the convention center after the headquarters are complete.
Gretchen Hall, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the taekwondo association has had an enormous economic impact on the city during its shared 30-year history.
"Economically it's our largest annual convention," she said. "The impact of having that many people in our city for a week is huge."
She said now that the organization has its new headquarters in Little Rock, they will continue to hold their world expo in the city. And with the extra space, the organization can host more small meetings.
The larger space will let the taekwondo association consolidate some of its national staff into one building in Little Rock. They will add about 15 to 20 employees, Wright said.
The new employees will be pulled from the organization's video staff in California, data processing employees from Atlanta and instructors from around the country.
The total cost of the headquarters project is estimated at $13.5 million, Wright said. About $1.6 million in funding came from state and city grants.
Scott Hardin, a spokesman for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, said the taekwondo association was awarded a grant of $950,000 from the development commission's Quick Action Closing Fund.
"We knew that they were considering building this new headquarters, so in order to keep it in Arkansas, it justified the funding for us," Hardin said. "These are not only new jobs, but very good paying jobs that are being created."
The headquarters will be built on a more than three-acre site of undeveloped land. The centerpiece of the complex is the Songham Star, a symbol of the martial art the organization practices, in the plaza garden.
A three-story office tower will dominate the headquarters, Wright said. One-story wings coming off the main building will house a 6,500-square-foot training center, a gym for employees and a museum. The gymnasium-like training center will give instructors space to hold seminars and shoot training videos. And with a new video production studio, those videos can be edited and distributed from the same location.
"We will be able to bring people in from around the country to stage training seminars that we currently schedule in regional sites," Wright said.
The museum will feature artifacts from the history of the American Taekwondo Association and from the martial arts culture, including a life-size statue of the organization's founder, Grand Eternal Master Haeng Ung Lee.
Another feature in the design is a three-tiered fountain. The water will flow down from the top level, which represents the relationship between the grand master, the instructor and the student.
"This signifies the passing of knowledge," Wright said.
Metro on 06/23/2015