Land trade benefits school

In a special School Board meeting Feb. 22, Pea Ridge School Board members agreed to trade 77 acres on Hayden Road to Jeff Spivey in exchange for 40 acres on West Pickens Road. The motion was made by Ryan Heckman and seconded by Sandy Button.

Board members also agreed to allow Steve Elliott to begin the planning process for the new baseball and softball fields; to continue with C.R. Crawford as the district’s construction manager and Steve Elliot of Lewis Architects Engineers as the district’s architect.

“The property is connected to the 20 we’ll be trading for off Hazelton Road,” school superintendent Rick Neal said, explaining that triples the size of the property for the new high school and is much more cost effective for providing infrastructure and technology.

“This will give us multiple exits and entrances from Hazelton, Ark. Hwy. 94 and It’ll Do Road … 60 acres will give us plenty of land for future growth,” Neal said.

Assistant superintendent Keith Martin said the accessibility to infrastructure and technology reduces costs of providing those

services and there will be better traffic controls allowing for a safer environment for students and staff.

“We’ve made a big step preparing for the future of our school district,” Neal said.

At Monday’s regular School Board meeting, Neal told board members that conversations with representatives of RLP Development are planned for this week about the trade of land for the ball fields and the construction of new ball fields on 10 acres purchased from Ron Bray and 5 acres from Inthavone B. Ratsachak and Saengthavy in July 2017. That would put the ball fields south of (and closer to) the multi-purpose facility on the school campus.

See the map on page 6B for the location of the properties.