Fayetteville Montessori School Buys Building, Plans Expansion

A real estate investment will soon give Victoria Butler the space she desperately needs.

Butler, director of the Fayetteville Montessori School, recently paid $633,500 for a 7,000-SF office building in Fayetteville’s Colt Square addition.

The property at 2340 N. Green Acres Road is in close proximity to several other buildings that comprise the FMS campus, and it will be renovated into a 12,000-SF structure to house students ages 2 ½ to 5 in the school’s primary educational program.

Butler, who helped establish FMS in 1974, did not disclose a project cost.

“We will move into that building by December of this year,” Butler said. “It needs some major work; the whole backside of the building is rotten and needs to be torn down, but we’ll make a lot of changes to it.”

Marlon Blackwell of Fayetteville is designing the renovations and Nabholz Construction will lead construction.

The new building will include nine classrooms. Currently, the FMS campus includes 21 classrooms spread over five buildings.

FMS has about 365 students and 85 employees.

John Carpenter with Lindsey & Associates of Fayetteville represented Butler in the building acquisition, which was made in the name of TTM+R LLC.

Legacy National Bank of Springdale funded the deal with a one-year mortgage of $627,420.

The previous owner was Demaree, Hash & Associates LLC, led by Brett Hash, and Reba Demaree, trustee of the Reba P. Demaree Trust.

The single-story building was built in 1996 and has a most recent appraisal of $679,350.

Demaree bought the building in May 1999 for $635,000.

Butler said the building has a few existing tenants, but they’ll be gone in time for construction to begin in May.