Two new food establishments and a University of Central Arkansas Welcome Center will move into the empty spaces on the first floor of Donaghey Hall, said Kelley Erstine, UCA chief of staff.
“It’s going to be more student-focused in its usage,” Erstine said.
The $16.7 million, four-story Donaghey Hall has lost four of its five retail tenants on the bottom floor since December. Upperclassmen live on the top three floors. The 67,500-square-foot building, which opened in 2016, has 15,000 square feet of commercial space on the bottom floor.
Contracts were terminated with Mosaique Bistro, Blue Sail Coffee, Uncle T’s Deli and Trek Bicycle Store Conway. The two remaining tenants — Marble Slab Creamery and UCA Makerspace Powered by the Conductor, a collaborative workspace — won’t move, Erstine said.
New tenants will be as follows:
• Twisted Taco: Located in the former Mosaique Bistro space, Erstine said Twisted Taco has an array of American-Mexican food, including 30 versions of tacos. The Atlanta-based restaurant is on several college campuses, he said, including Georgia Tech University and the University of Tennessee. Twisted Taco has applied for a liquor license, said Diane Newton, UCA’s vice president for finance and administration.
“They are working on it. Beer and wine is what I’m understanding,” she said. Newton said students may not use their dining dollars to buy alcohol.
Erstine said the plan is for Twisted Taco to open by the fall semester.
The website for Twisted Taco does not list another location in Arkansas.
• Einstein Bros. Bagels: With a store already in the UCA Student Center, a second location will open in the former Blue Sail Coffee space and will be the first new business to be completed in Donaghey Hall, Erstine said. “It should be done by the beginning of summer — that’s our push,” he said. “That’s a lot easier space to convert over, since it was a coffee shop. It’s laid out pretty well for [Einstein Bros. Bagels’] standards.”
Erstine said the best part is, those two businesses will be run by Aramark, UCA’s food-service provider.
“What’s so good about that is our students will be able to use their meal plans,” he said. Erstine said every student who lives on campus must have some type of UCA meal plan.
“A UCA student can go, for example, to Twisted Taco, have their cards swiped — what’s called a declining-balance card,” he said.
Also, Aramark will allow students to use their dining dollars at Marble Slab Creamery, Erstine said.
He said that although he enjoyed Mosaique’s food, it seemed that students’ perception was that it was a high-end restaurant.
• UCA Welcome Center: It will be in the largest space on the ground floor, the 3,722 square feet formerly occupied by Uncle T’s Deli.
Erstine said the center will be the “front porch” of UCA’s student-recruiting efforts.
“That will be the first stop for prospective students to come to in their consideration of coming to UCA as a student,” he said. It will have a room to show videos and for students to meet with tour guides.
The welcome center will include space for a few employees of admissions and housing, but those entire offices will not be moved to Donaghey Hall. Those offices are now in Bernard Hall, which is “a little tough to find,” Erstine said.
“The wonderful part of that, quite honestly, is all the parking behind Donaghey Hall,” he said. “I think it’ll make a lot more sense to have it in the Donaghey building.”
Donaghey Hall is at Donaghey Avenue and Bruce Street.
The welcome center now is in the lobby of Wingo Hall, the building where the UCA president’s office is located. Visitor parking is limited in front of the building, Erstine said.
“We would hope that the welcome center would be open by fall of this year. That may be a little stretch, but we’re hoping that can happen,” he said.
• General meeting space: The space previously occupied by Trek Bicycle Store Conway, which closed in February, will be utilized as a general meeting space. Erstine said there is often a need for space to hold UCA-related events or meetings. “That may be a situation where we may rent that space out, as well, as we do meeting space at Brewer-Hegeman,” he said. Erstine said the space could potentially be used by the public, but those details will be decided later.
Newton said the money to renovate or repurpose the spaces will be paid from a renovation account.
“On a monthly basis, a portion of what gets paid to Aramark comes back to us in the form of a renovation account,” she said. “So what they’ve done is, they’ve fronted the money to pay for the renovation of the space — Einstein and Twisted Taco, and they will take it from the renovation reimbursement. They’ll pay themselves back over the remainder of the contract.”
She said UCA’s contract with Aramark goes through 2022. “It won’t even take the full remainder of the contract,” she said. “It’s still our space; they’re just utilizing our space to give another dining option to students.”
UCA senior Kay Adderley of the Bahamas said she has eaten at Marble Slab Creamery but didn’t frequent the other businesses.
“Mosaique was too expensive. I looked at their menu. I wanted to try the food, but I didn’t want to pay my real money,” she said.
Freshman Grace Grove of Jacksonville also said she had only eaten at Marble Slab.
Both students said they would definitely try the taco restaurant because they could use their dining dollars.
Erstine said he believes the new tenants will be successful.
“When you look at the purpose of that building, it’s doing what it was designed to do — as a dormitory,” he said.
UCA President Houston Davis said in an email to students, faculty and staff in January announcing that UCA was going to repurpose the bottom floor of Donaghey Hall that the student housing is “performing as originally planned, and the overall project is performing against revenue targets.”
He said last week that he is “very excited that the new mission-centered uses in Donaghey [Hall] will allow us to meet requests from our students for new, high-
demand campus-eating options. Additionally, the creation of a welcome center and enrollment-services operation will provide a user-friendly access point for visitors, as well as current students.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.