July is the dream date for completion of the $3 million Southwest Arkansas Educational Cooperative facility under construction on the south perimeter of the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope campus here.
SWAEC Executive Director Lindy Franks said Wednesday that, despite recent change orders and problems with subsurface conditions, progress on the 22,000-square foot headquarters for the four-county educational development program is essentially on-schedule.
“Our dream is to move in July 4 weekend,” Franks said. “We're beginning to get really pumped. Things are moving along quickly. I thought it would be a slow process, but it's really moving along.”
She said major construction is complete on the structure and interior work on all three floors has started.
“By next week, we should have heating and cooling in the building,” Franks said. “They should start the plumbing later next week.”
She said three significant changes have been made during the construction process, but none have altered the completion schedule dramatically. Franks said one change was made to the interior orientation of a central conference room to provide for a better traffic flow between it and the kitchen during meetings.
“Things actually look one way on a blueprint, but when you walk through, you wonder: How is this really going to work?,” she said.
That change did not require much more than an architectural direction, Franks said, while other interior changes have mostly been pragmatic.
“One of the things that caught our eye was a need for floor plugs in the conference center,” she said. Franks said in an era of laptop computers and power point presentations, floor plugs are essential.
The major exterior change has been the need to do additional subsurface work for the parking lot to the south of the building, she said.
“The nemesis of any project in Southwest Arkansas is the dirt,” Franks quipped.
That same problem had hindered initial construction, as well.
The Hope City Board of Directors approved change orders totaling $58,731 on the project Tuesday night, which will leave some $48,562 in contingency funds, according to Hope City Manager Catherine Cook.
“We are totally within budget,” Franks noted Wednesday.
The City is the funding administration entity for the U.S. Department of Agriculture loans financing the construction under a lease of the property to the City of Hope by UACCH. The building will be leased to SWAEC by the City through the payout period of the loan.
“We couldn't have had more cooperative partners than the City and the college,” Franks said.
The facility will headquarter the 30 employees of SWAEC in serving 10 school districts across four Southwest Arkansas counties, involving some 12,171 students and 1,217 public school teachers and administrators.
