Harding Buys Land for New Center in Rogers
by January 26, 2012 4:53 pm 121 views
Harding University is hoping to have a place in Northwest Arkansas to call its own by the end of the year.
The private Christian university based in Searcy bought 1.83 acres on South 52nd Street in Rogers earlier this month for $952,000.
Thursday afternoon, president David Burks said the vacant land will be developed as a new home for the school’s current satellite campus in Benton County, the Northwest Arkansas Professional Center, that opened in November 2005.
The center, which serves students in various graduate and undergraduate studies, is housed in Bentonville on the second floor of Four Lakeside Center at 1803 Phyllis St. Harding leases the space from the building owner, the J.E. Lindsey Family Limited Partnership.
“We leased as we began to see if things would work, and it has worked,” Burks said. “Things are going very well. And for the long run, we felt like we needed to build our own permanent facility.”
Burks said construction should begin by March 10 and be completed by the end of the year.
James H. Cone Inc. in Little Rock is the general contractor who will direct the project. The two-story, 12,000-SF building will be visible from Interstate 540, Burks said.
The space is approximately the same the school leases at the Bentonville location. The new center on South 52nd Street, with classroom and lab space as well as administrative offices, will be next to the building that houses the real estate offices of Coldwell Banker Harris McHaney & Faucette.