The head of the Arkansas Department of Community Correction announced on Tuesday plans to move the agency -- which supervises 60,000 parolees and probationers -- from its downtown Little Rock headquarters into the shuttered Timex distribution center across the Arkansas River.
The 250,000-square-foot facility on Pike Avenue in North Little Rock closed last year with a loss of 64 jobs. Community Correction Director Sheila Sharp said the agency hopes to move in around August 2019.
The Arkansas Board of Corrections, which met Tuesday at the Tucker Unit prison, gave Community Correction the go-ahead to seek around $18 million in bonds to purchase and renovate the facility, as well as another building being rented by the agency in Fort Smith.
The move will consolidate more than 200 parole and probation employees -- who are now working at offices in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pine Bluff -- into one building. The Parole Board also will move its offices to the building.
Arkansas Community Correction and the Parole Board currently occupy four floors of a building on Capitol Avenue in Little Rock for their central offices.
"This agency was started in 1993, and it has never had its own building for its central offices," said spokesman Dina Tyler. "It's been paying a lease now for 25 years."
Sharp said the agency will use funds previously allotted to rent the central office space, as well as a drug court and probation office in North Little Rock, to pay back the bonds.
The agency is spending about $1.4 million annually to lease those three offices, Sharp said, while annual bond repayments are expected to cost $1.13 million. The agency also will start having to pay for utilities if it owns the building, which the agency has a conditional offer to buy for nearly $4.6 million.
"It should be a wash," Sharp said.
Sharp said the department has a similar plan to take out $1 million in bonds to purchase the Fort Smith building housing the area's parole and probation offices, and to pay back the bonds out of rent savings.
After getting approval from the Board of Corrections on Tuesday, Sharp said the plan still needs permission from the governor, Legislative Council and Arkansas Development Finance Authority.
If the purchase is approved, Sharp said the agency will have to spend about a year renovating the former distribution center to fit its needs, at a cost of $12 million-$13 million. Part of the plan includes moving Community Correction's training academy from Pine Bluff to the North Little Rock facility. No prisoners will be housed at the facility, Tyler said.
Once renovated, Community Correction plans to use as much as 120,000 square feet, Sharp said, which would still leave about half the space available to lease to other state agencies.
North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith is supportive of the plan, his chief of staff, Danny Bradley, said Tuesday.
"The mayor and I have been in meetings" with Community Correction, Bradley said. "This is a very nice facility that will service Community Correction well. It also brings jobs to our area."
Tyler, the spokesman for the agency, said she did not know how many of the central office's staff members now live in North Little Rock.
Metro on 04/04/2018