Real estate executive Burke Larkin joins Orion Capital Partners

A notable real estate executive in Northwest Arkansas has changed companies.

Burke Larkin, who headed up the Northwest Arkansas office of Little Rock developer Whisinvest Realty for more than a decade, is now a partner at Orion Capital Partners, a 20-year-old firm with offices in Little Rock and Bentonville.

Larkin said his final day at Whisinvest was April 5.

Numerous commercial development projects in Northwest Arkansas are covered with Larkin’s fingerprints. In March 2012, Little Rock businessman Joe Whisenhunt, CEO of Whisenhunt Investment Group and patriarch of one of the state’s wealthiest families, paid $19 million — in cash — for 375 acres of undeveloped land along the Interstate 49 corridor in Rogers and Lowell.

The acreage encompassed land in the Pinnacle Hills, Pleasant Crossing and The Grove developments, allocated for projects that once belonged to groups that included Northwest Arkansas developers Gary Brandon, Charles Reaves, Bill Schwyhart and Robert Thornton.

Whisenhunt hired Larkin, a Russellville native, in the fall of 2012 to move to Northwest Arkansas to market, sell and develop the property. Whisinvest sold some of the land but developed or still holds most of it. One of the more notable projects is The District at Pinnacle Hills, a 54-acre office and retail destination at the southwest corner of the intersection of southbound Interstate 49 and Pauline Whitaker Parkway.

Larkin said he’ll continue to represent Whisinvest “for the immediate future” for current leases or pending sales, but he is excited to work with Orion and business partners Ben Lester and Brock Martin.

He said his work will focus on “build-for-rent” neighborhoods, new commercial developments and acquisitions.