City building enters next phase of development

SPRINGDALE — Planning for the new Criminal Justice Center and Administration has reached a milestone, the architect and mayor agree.

Roy Decker presented design plans for the municipal campus Tuesday night to the City Council. And there were no surprises, Mayor Doug Sprouse said.

“It’s no longer just pretty pictures, but there are a lot of specifics,” Decker said. He showed renderings of three-dimensional models for offices, mechanical duct work across the building and details down to where each light and power outlet will sit.

The facility will be built in two phases. The Police Department and courts areas will be demolished and rebuilt starting in the spring in Phase One. Then the city administrative offices and chamber will be renovated. Phase One is scheduled for completion in May 2020, with Phase Two expected in June 2021, said Wyman Morgan, the city’s director of administration and finance.

“It’s been a complicated process to figure our how to keep one part of the building working while the other is being built, and then doing that in reverse.” Decker said. “I can tell you a lot of hours and brain cells have been burned over that.”

Springdale residents approved a $200 million bond issue in February and spending $36 million for a Criminal Justice Center and a renovated City Administration Building.

The current facility is crowded with files stacked in halls and lawyers meeting with clients in the lobby of the courtroom. Several departments are housed in buildings down the block and across Spring Street. When the City Administration Building opened in 1995, Springdale had 35,182 residents. Today, that number nears 80,000.

The new municipal campus will encompass 120,000 square feet compared to the 45,000 of the current building, Morgan said.

The new city buildings will offer only one public entrance for safety, Decker said. The offices for departments such as building, engineering and planning, will be next to each other, allowing for easier navigation for residents and collaboration among the various staff members.

Decker said the courtroom and City Council chambers will feature a simple, but dramatic design element, with ordinary trusses hung upside down and covered with a local wood. This design is striking but economical, he said.

New tariffs on building material and even the high demand for construction workers in Northwest Arkansas will affect the final price of construction, Sprouse said. But he feels contingencies for such roadblocks were built into the original amount of the bond.

“All the way through the program, they’ve looked at every possible way to save money and costs within our available budget,” Sprouse said of the architects and engineers.

“We will build it economically, yet it will show the strength of the civic presence,” Decker said. “It will be a durable, long-term building, but also be flexible for your needs.”

The next step in building the new center will be drawing even more specific construction documents from which members of the Milestone Construction crews will work to build the facility, Decker said.

“We will build it economically, yet it will show the strength of the civic presence. It will be a durable, long-term building, but also be flexible for your needs.”

— Roy Decker, architect