NWACC officials back traffic signal

Committee says stoplight makes leaving campus safer

BENTONVILLE — Northwest Arkansas Community College officials support adding a traffic signal in front of the college that would make it easier to safely exit the campus.

The college’s Land Use and Facilities Committee voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of a signal at Southeast 14th Street and Eagle Way, an idea from a local developer.

Matt Sitton has plans to develop about 10 acres at the intersection, across the street from the college and Mercy Convenient Care.

“Right now the important thing is allowing proper access,” said Sitton, a Little Flock resident. “I think it’s going to help everybody.”

The additional commercial development he has in mind, in the form of restaurants and shops, would be beneficial to students, he said.

Nobody wants to build anything there without the traffic signal, he said.

Sitton commissioned a traffic study done by Peters and Associates Engineers of Little Rock. The study showed Sitton’s development would warrant a traffic signal at the intersection.

About 5,740 vehicle trips would be generated during a typical weekday by the development, according to the study.

The firm also reported the signal could be included as part of the city’s coordinated traffic signal system along Southeast 14th Street “without a negative impact”

to traffic flow, according to the study.

The college’s support of the project will be expressed in a letter sent to Mayor Bob McCaslin, who’s being asked to apply for the signal installation to the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department.

Ricky Tompkins, the college’s vice president of learning and a committee member, said it’s extremely difficult to turn left out of the campus onto 14th Street.

Turning right is fine, unless one is trying to make it to the ramp for Interstate 49 South a short distance away.

The traffic signal would help with that issue, he said.

“It is going to be, I think, a whole lot easier and a whole lot safer for our students and our employees,” Tompkins said.

Sitton said after the meeting he doesn’t yet have any businesses lined up to occupy the site he’d develop.

In other business at Tuesday’s meeting, the committee unanimously approved hiring SCM Architects to do the design work on the college’s next new building. Approval of that decision goes to the Board of Trustees, which meets Monday.

The “integrated design” building will provide space for and encourage collaboration among those in the arts, entrepreneurial and workforce development departments. It will be built in the middle of campus, just west of the Becky Paneitz Student Center.

The college received interest from 12 firms and narrowed the list to four before doing interviews, according to Jim Lay, the college’s executive director of facilities and construction management.

SCM Architects, which has offices in Fayetteville and Little Rock, also did plans for the college’s main campus in 2014 and more recently for the Springdale site where the college plans to build its Washington County Center.

“It is going to be, I think, a whole lot easier and a whole lot safer for our students and our employees.”

— Ricky Tompkins, NWACC’s vice president of learning