SREG Mission Lines Up With Kings Tree-Hugging Values

Within her career in communications and program development, Sarah King has often worked with groups that cultivate growth.

Her professional focus has shifted since she was featured as one of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 in 2009 — from nonprofit to for-profit, and from garden promotion to property development/management. However, King sees continuity there, between her stint as program director at Botanical Garden of the Ozarks and her current position as marketing and community outreach at Specialized Real Estate Group in Fayetteville.

“I know that it won’t look like it on the surface, and it seems funny because I’m in a totally different industry now. But I’m using a lot of the same skills and doing a lot of the same things,” King said.

At SREG, King handles community partnerships with nonprofits, in addition to marketing and press. As a result, she gets to work with some of the same people with whom she worked during her time at the botanical gardens.

To King, the transition was natural, in light of SREG’s eco-friendly, health-conscious practices, which were first shown with the 2010 development of ECO Modern Flats, an apartment complex near the University of Arkansas that is LEED Platinum and ENERGY STAR certified. King helped promote the project, as a freelancer, and took on a full-time role three years later.

In fact, King’s self-professed tree-hugging tendencies have also helped shape community and resident outreach at SREG, through efforts that garnered national recognition in Multifamily Executive Magazine last fall.

Perhaps the most notable of those efforts is a system of community gardens within SREG’s multifamily residences, including the planned Uptown project, a mixed-use development set to open in early 2017 across from Malco Razorback Cinema.

Uptown will greatly expand SREG’s footprint in Fayetteville, adding 308 residential units to its current 450 under management, and it will also feature about 17,000 SF of commercial space.

King is excited about Uptown’s potential to give the area more of an identity, and the garden will play a part in that, while providing access to fresh food and fostering connections among the tenants.

“Those are things that are going to make life just a little bit more fulfilling. That’s something that gives me great satisfaction,” she said.

King’s current focus is on justifying the practice from a business perspective to the property management industry. 

“I’m trying to develop the data analysis, trying to capture the numbers. How does this affect tenant satisfaction? Are our residents happier? Does it make them more likely to sign a lease because of the program or are people likelier to renew a lease because of the program?” she said. “Anecdotally, we think that is the case.”

King will present on the topic at the National Apartment Association this June in San Francisco.

She also spearheads a service program that keeps SREG’s small staff of 14 active in the community.

The team regularly cleans trails, in addition to working with local nonprofits, Tri Cycle Farms and Apple Seeds.

Also, the firm recently teamed up with Habitat for Humanity of Washington County to develop “a very different sort of habitat home,” King said.

“We’re able to create affordable housing that still represents all those tenets that we hold dear. It’s on the trail, near downtown, a very walkable location, and it features beautiful, modern design and really thoughtful spaces, both indoors and out,” she added.

Construction will start soon on the project, which, like much of the firm’s work, was designed by Modus Studio.

As a marketer and content creator, King appreciates that there’s always a story to be told at SREG, and as a mother she appreciates the firm’s understanding of a need for work/life balance.

King’s son Abe, now 4, was born very early, at 25 weeks, and spent his first four months at the UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock. When he did come home, it was with an oxygen tank in tow.

It was the most difficult experience of King’s life, but it put things in perspective and made her stronger.

“When you have a child whose health is precarious, nothing else matters, and on the other side of that experience,” King added with a laugh, “it certainly redefines what you consider an emergency or a bad day.”