The Little Rock Technology Park Authority Board gave its executive director, Brent Birch, a 5 percent raise Wednesday, boosting his annual salary to $105,000.
Birch, formerly chief information officer for Arkansas Business Publishing Group, is the tech park's only employee and has been on the job since July 2014. He's an ambassador to the tech park's sponsors and also is responsible for securing the startup companies that now occupy the tech park's temporary space at 107 E. Markham St. The sponsors are the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital.
He noted that the co-working space in the Block 2 building is at capacity with 20 firms, all of which want and need a small work space downtown but aren't yet large enough to pay market-rate rents in the area.
Also Wednesday, the board discussed broadband providers for the yet-to-be-built $100 million tech park. When complete, the park will be located on and adjacent to a city block between Main and Scott streets off Capitol Avenue.
Birch's recent request for qualifications yielded five potential telecom/data services vendors: Windstream, AT&T, Unite Private Networks, Ritter Communications and Level 3 Communications. Pricing was not a part of the request for qualifications, he said. That aspect won't be ascertained until it can be determined how much bandwidth is needed by tenants.
In computer networks, bandwidth is used as a synonym for the data transfer rate -- the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period, usually a second.
Birch was supposed to provide the board with a recommendation Wednesday but said he had unanswered questions from some of the providers. Interested vendors are expected to make presentations at the board's December meeting.
The company hired to provide Internet access for tech park companies within the campus is critical to the park's success, said board Chairman Mary Good, founding dean of the George W. Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Good said her questions for the companies center around how much bandwidth they can provide and at what price.
"We don't want an infrastructure that is suited only for today and becomes obsolescent in six months," she said after the meeting.
She estimates it will take three to five years to finish out the park and said it is important to pick an Internet provider that can keep up with the technology over that time period and beyond.
"We've got some very competent companies that are bidding," Good said. "The main thing is to get the most out of what we can afford."
Foremost on the board's list of priorities is to acquire land for its first phase of development, which is set to begin after the first of the year.
Birch presented the board with a breakdown of properties and pricing included in an $11.6 million deal brokered over the summer with a couple of limited liability companies owned by financier Warren Stephens. The purchase is broken down into two transactions: one from a company called DMT Ventures LLC and another known as Five Main Place LLC.
The DMT deal for $785,000 includes a large parking lot on the west side of the 400 block of Main Street. The rest, which the tech park is contracted to buy for more than $10.8 million, includes the office building called Five Main Place at 421 Main St. for $8.5 million; the vacant Exchange Bank Annex at 417 Main St. for $1.4 million; the vacant and soon-to-be demolished old Stephens building at 114 E. Capitol Ave. for $140,000; what is known as the Center Theater parking lot at 405-411 Main St. for $405,000; and what is known as the Keith lot on Scott Street, also for $405,000.
Five Main Place, where the state Department of Education leases space, underwent a $6 million renovation in 2010, according to information provided by Birch and board member Dickson Flake.
The only non-Stephens-owned property the tech park board needs for the first phase of development is former Supreme Court Justice Richard Mays Sr.'s three-story law office at 415 Main St. Since the tech park's last meeting Nov. 2, the board has extended Mays an offer of $845,000 -- the value given the building after an appraisal paid for by Mays. The tech park got its own appraisal, which valued the 10,020-square-foot structure at $670,000.
Mays has not yet responded to the offer, Flake said, and "there is no indication he will take it." The board is prepared to acquire it using eminent domain if it can't come to an agreement with Mays on price.
The tech park is seeking a $17.5 million loan from a group of banks to help fund the first phase of development, which also includes demolition, construction and professional services related to refurbishing the buildings that will be used. The total cost for Phase One is about $24 million, with the rest coming from the tech park's portion of a citywide sales tax approved by voters in 2011.
The tech park is due to collect more than $6.6 million from the tax by the end of the year.
Business on 11/12/2015