Groundbreaking held for new $1.5 million APAC Central regional office

A groundbreaking was held Wednesday (Jan. 15) on a new 12,200-square-foot office building at Chaffee Crossing that will be a regional office for APAC-Central Inc.

The $1.5 million building, located at 1010 Frontier Road in Barling, will be built by Chaffee Commercial Properties which is owned by Steve Beam and Rod Blake.

APAC-Central, formerly known as Arkhola Sand and Gravel, employs 675 people in two states. The new office will be house 25 people and will support 245 jobs in the Fort Smith area. For many year, Arkhola and APAC offices were located in downtown Fort Smith in the Ward-Garrison building.

The company began in Oklahoma in 1911, and was moved to the Fort Smith area in 1926. Arkhola sold to Oldcastle Materials in 2006, and was renamed APAC-Central, Inc. in 2009.

“This is the first private development to be built on Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority property inside the city limits of Barling and Barling officials have been great to work with,” Steve Beam said in a statement issued by the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority. “We are very interested in building offices for other companies seeking long-term leases so we hope this is only the first of many.”

Park Estes, vice president of marketing and sales says APAC-Central, said the new office is in the middle of company operations in the area. Also, Estes said Arkhola has a history with the Chaffee area.

“Arkhola was the first company to pour concrete at Fort Chaffee in 1941. The land where our new office will be located was formerly part of Fort Chaffee,” Estes noted in the statement.