FCRA Executive Director Ivy Owen receives defense communities award

Ivy Owen, executive director of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority (FCRA), has won the Association of Defense Communities’ 2017 John Lynch Redevelopment Leadership Award for efforts at Chaffee Crossing.

Owen, now in his 10th year heading the authority, credited staff as well as the communities of Fort Smith, Barling, and Van Buren for the FCRA’s third ADC award in six years.

FCRA first received an award from ADC in 2012 and again in 2016. During that span, there has been close to $1.5 billion in capital investments at Chaffee Crossing, and the area supports more than 3,500 jobs. In 2013, Owen began working with the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education (ACHE) President Kyle Parker and the charitable Degen Foundation to bring a medical college to Chaffee Crossing.

With help of Owen and the FCRA Board, more than 200 acres of land were donated for what would become the ACHE, which opens its inaugural facility to the first class of 150 students on July 31 from its $32.4 million Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine (ARCOM) facility.

At a ceremony there on Tuesday (July 25), Parker said the college “could not have happened without Ivy’s” and the FCRA’s help. Owen called the progress “God-given” and a “team effort,” citing accomplishments like ArcBest’s $30 million, 975-job expansion as “jewels” that were outside the authority’s control.

Addressing audience members at the ceremony, Owen credited the regional coalition of Fort Smith, Barling, and Van Buren and the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce for unifying as “one voice” as well as U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., for advising the region it needed to do so to be heard in Washington.

“We need one voice,’ (Boozman said), and that’s when this community came together as a region and became a regional voice in Washington, and you can tell from what’s going on around here, that it makes a difference,” Owen said.

The federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission recommended in 1995 the permanent closure of Fort Chaffee, then an active U.S. Army post with around 72,000 acres. The federal government opted to lease 65,000 acres to the Arkansas Army National Guard to be used for training. The remaining 7,000+ acres were returned to civilian authorities for reuse. The Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority was formed in 1997 and began the process of converting the property to industrial, commercial, residential and recreational use.

According to the ADC website, the John Lynch Redevelopment Leadership Award previously was given to an outstanding local redevelopment authority, but “beginning this year (2017), the award will be given to an individual whose outstanding leadership has been essential in ensuring that a community or local redevelopment authority has (1) helped address the community’s specific economic needs following base realignment or closure; (2) shown measureable results; (3) incorporated innovative public-private partnerships; and/or (4) served as a model for other communities across the country.”

The nominee’s activities must be associated with a redevelopment project that is in the construction phase or has been completed within the past two years. The nominee must also be a current ADC member and may not have received an ADC Defense Community Award in the past three years.