Lasting Investment: HFA Relocates to Refurbished Digs in Bentonville

Chris Horton’s recollection of the old National Home Centers showroom in Bentonville is succinct.

“It was empty and dark,” the Harrison French & Associates Ltd. vice president and CFO recalled.

That was in fall 2012 when Horton first stepped inside the building.

Today, Horton’s office is there in what is now one of the newest and most appealing work spaces in Northwest Arkansas.

“This seemed like a crazy idea at first,” said Harrison French, the firm’s CEO and founder. “But as we started thinking about it more and more, there’s a pretty good value here, and we needed the space. It may be just a little bigger than what we really needed, we just felt like it was still a good value.”

So, in late December, one of the area’s largest architectural and engineering firms officially had a new address.

The Bentonville firm moved from its headquarters of more than a decade — 809 S.W. A St. — into a refurbished building at 1705 S. Walton Blvd.

French, Horton and Larry Lott, president and COO, bought the vacant development — which included several buildings and 130,000 SF — in December 2012 for $4.38 million.

It was formerly occupied by National Home Centers Inc., a privately held, Springdale-based chain of home building supply stores that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2009. The Bentonville store was closed the following spring.

The purchase included a building being leased by New Life Christian Center. The church renovated one of the buildings in 2012 and holds services there twice on Sundays and Wednesdays. French said that agreement will continue.

Baldwin Shell Construction Co. in Rogers used a building permit valued at $3.2 million to refurbish the showroom building, about 45,000 SF, for the HFA offices.

The company’s previous headquarters was less than half that and had employees working in two separate buildings.

The new location includes high ceilings, plenty of natural lighting and an open studio for all professionals under one roof.

The renovation was completed in six months, allowing HFA to move its offices and 151 employees on Dec. 30.

French, a native of Bentonville, said the most important aspect of the new office is the open studio.

“That works well for our industry, for what we do,” he said. “If we were a bunch of attorneys, we probably wouldn’t have an open studio. Being architects and engineers, it allows for a more collaborative work environment. And that’s the big word you hear a lot of today is ‘collaboration.’”

The most visible feature of the renovation project is along the south side of the building, where walls were knocked out and replaced with large windows.

Other trappings now available to HFA are a large training room with three 80-inch television screens, as well as a dining area large enough to handle catered lunches or other events.

Uses are also being discussed for a 35,000-SF building that’s behind the refurbished building. French said one option is to develop the building into a health and fitness facility for employees.

“Like a lot of [employers], we want to promote a healthy lifestyle,” French said. “What scale that’s going to be, we don’t really know yet. But we have a great place to put it. Some businesses provide that; some don’t.”

French founded his company in 1990 as the sole employee. As the company nears its 25th birthday, HFA’s new headquarters will be its fifth location.

In addition to its Bentonville headquarters, HFA has an additional 11 employees in Texas, Florida and New York, for a total staff of 162.

Despite downsizing by about 75 employees during the last year, French said he has no regrets moving into the larger Bentonville office, considering it a long-term investment.

“We don’t like downsizing; it’s unfortunate,” French explained. “We have other clients that are growing, just one client in particular that built a really big program that we responded to scaled way back down. There wasn’t a whole lot we could do in regard to that. We had over 100 people working on that program. Now, it’s significantly less than that.”

French added that the firm will continue to pursue new clients as it specializes in building programs for clients with multiple projects in a particular region, or across the country.

HFA fulfills more than 100 projects annually for its largest client — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — while growing its portfolio of work for other existing clients, which include Starbucks Corp., Sonic Drive-In, 7-Eleven and Walgreens.

Two others mentioned by French are sporting goods chain Academy Sports + Outdoors of Katy, Texas, and Stripes, a chain of nearly 600 convenience stores in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, owned by publicly-traded Susser Holdings Corp. of Corpus Christi, Texas.  

Both entities “are asking us to do more things,” French said.