SPRINGDALE -- The gleam from the shiny new floors was matched by the gleam in Conley Clarke's eyes Thursday.
Clarke stood alongside his business partner, Ryan Plunkett, just off the edge of one of the six refinished hardwood floors at the Next Level Achievement center, which was formerly the All-Star Sports Arena. A number of workers in another part of the facility were busy mopping, cleaning and preparing for a big weekend of youth basketball activity.
The sports venue sat vacant for many months, its doors secured by heavy chains and padlocks. In July a small group of investors bought the facility out of foreclosure from a local bank for a reported $2.1 million. When the new owners removed the chains, they walked into facility that had fallen into desperate disrepair.
"I've spent 70 hours a week on this, easily," Clarke said. "We have totally changed everything."
Clarke said he and Plunkett are slowly renovating the entire facility over three phases. The first phase was to renovate the six full basketball courts, sanding the floors down and resurfacing them with new stripes in the facility's black-and-silver theme.
Yards and yards of worn artificial turf was replaced with new carpeting around the perimeter of the courts. They also replaced scoreboards and are adding flat-screen televisions and cameras at each end of each court so that games can be filmed and streamed live.
"Grandparents, for $5, will be able to watch their grandchildren's games online," Clarke said.
The old concession area has been remodeled and will be a cafe-style setting with shiny resurfaced concrete floors with the NLA logo painted on the stained concrete.
On the other side of the building, the old artificial turf on the soccer fields has been replaced with new turf, and the old wooden court that once was the Rogers Mounties' home court before being installed at the arena, was removed and replaced with a Sports Court surface that is more conducive to volleyball, Plunkett said.
"People who have walked in here have been blown away at the progress we have made, and there's still a lot to be done," Plunkett said. "We don't want people to walk into here and say it's the old All-Star. I don't want to hear the words All-Star at all, because we're a different organization."
Clarke and Plunkett first met at Fayetteville's AAO complex, where Plunkett was the athletics director and Clarke ran a youth basketball program. They talked about forming a partnership for a while before the opportunity to take over the vacated arena presented itself, Plunkett said.
"He approached me about going into a partnership and ownership and being able to run this the way we want to," Plunkett, who graduated from Fort Smith Southside and the University of Arkansas, said. "When he approached me about it, I jumped on the ball and ran with it."
Clarke has long been involved in youth sports since moving to Northwest Arkansas from Oklahoma when his son, Rotnei Clarke, signed to play basketball for the Razorbacks.
His daughter, Cassie, was a standout at Fayetteville High School and now coaches volleyball at Ramay Junior High. His wife is an assistant volleyball coach at Fayetteville.
"When this place shut down is when youth sports kind of exploded," Clarke said. "I've coached forever. I came out here when Rotnei came here to play basketball. I started just training so that I could watch all of his games."
The prestigious Arkansas Wings basketball program will move its headquarters to Next Level in 2015, Clarke said. The group has been based out of Little Rock for many years under the direction of Ron Crawford. Clarke will take over operation of the the Northwest Arkansas Wings program.
"Ron was ready to get out," he said. "I've been friends with him for a long time and he asked me to take it over. I told him we'd love to do it."
Crawford will remain part of the statewide Wings program.
Clarke said he expects to have around 130 boys in the Wings programs in grades 3-11, but he also plans to focus a lot of time on building a Wings girls program.
"There's not a lot for the girls out there and we feel like we can offer the girls the same level of play we do for the boys teams," he said.
Plunkett said starting next week, the neighboring Shiloh Christian sports teams will use the facility for volleyball, basketball and baseball as drop-down hitting and pitching lanes will be added to the section of the building where they are working now.
He also said Ecclesia College will return to the facility to practice for the remainder of this season, and hopes to have the college programs return to the facility for home games next season. The Royals used the facility for home games several years ago but have played home games at Springdale Har-Ber the past few years.
Volleyball is planned for next year and the new owners are also hopeful to reopen the weight room and offer a computer lab and tutorial area in later phases.
Already the facility has hosted a big tournament for the area's home-school programs, and will host a large home-school regional basketball tournament in February through the NWA Hornets. Plunkett is hopeful of landing the home-school national tournament next year.
"My hope is that this place is filled with youth from all across Northwest Arkansas," Plunkett said. "One of the biggest draws for me was it wasn't just basketball. It's our basketball, it's our volleyball, it's our soccer. I feel like we can reach so many more kids through our different avenues.
"One thing Conley and I share a passion for is, however long it takes to get this place going, in the end, it's for the kids. For them to have a place to call home."
Clarke said his son will also be involved in the facility when he returns home from playing professionally in Belgium. There is also a chance he will be invited to play in the Boston Celtics summer league. Rotnei, who played three seasons at Arkansas before transferring to Butler, played for current Celtics coach Brad Stevens at Butler.
"He may not know it yet, but he'll be helping with our summer camps," Plunkett said.
Sports on 12/14/2014
Clarification: A previous version of this story inaccurately described changes in leadership of the Wings program.