Correction: This article incorrectly described funds for the building. A $15.5 million grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation is expected to cover construction costs for the building. The final $2.5 million of the Windgate gift is a challenge grant, with the university looking to raise $2.5 million to establish an endowment to pay for building upkeep and maintenance.
FORT SMITH - Student artists at University of Arkansas at Fort Smith will have a new three-story academic home complete with a 150-seat film theater, but the $18 million project will benefit the entire Fort Smith community, university leaders said at a ceremony Monday.
Drizzling rain forced the event indoors, where Chancellor Paul Beran described the university’s goals to improve “quality of place” and bolster economic development in addition to benefiting students.
“This kind of investment does all of those things,” Beran said, adding that visitorswill be welcomed for activities such as film festivals and guest lectures. About 175 students study under two art bachelor’s degree programs at the university, but all students must study some form of fine arts to satisfy state-mandated requirements for a bachelor’s degree.
A $15.5 million grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation covers most of the costs for the 58,000-square-foot building. The university is looking to raise an additional $2.5 million, in part by offering donors naming rights for parts of the project such as a gallery and sculpture gardens.
Construction should take just over a year to finish,said Henry Rinne, dean for the university’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Little Rock-based architecture firm Witsell Evans Rasco will design the building and CDI Contractors will construct it.
The project marks growth for a university that began offering four-year degrees in 2002, changing its name from Westark College. Recent years have seen construction flourish at the 123-acre campus, including an addition to the main campus library completed last year that more than doubled the its size.
More than 7,100 students attend the university.
University officials have made it clear that more growth is expected, unveiling a master plan last year for future campus projects. In March, Beran told the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees that the master plan is “based on a projection of 9,000 on-the-ground students.”
At the ceremony, Rinne called the planned arts structure “the first building to be built as part of the latest master plan.” The university also plans to build a student recreation and fitness center that students voted in favor of this year and that will increase a fee to fund its construction.
The master plan also describes goals for the campus over the next 20 years, including potential sites for new buildings. Money has not been raised for most of the ideas in the plan.
The Windgate foundation, based in Siloam Springs, earlier gave much smaller gifts to the university to help establish a letterpress program, a type of printing technique used tocreate graphics.
In an interview, John Brown III, executive director for the foundation, said it has a strong interest in supporting visual arts. The university’s art department leader, Don Lee, is friends with some foundation board members, he added.
“We toured the old facilities, recognized the need and saw an opportunity here to have a great impact, not just on the campus but on Fort Smith and the greater River Valley,” Brown said.
Lee has been at the university since the early 1970s. Students now mostly use spaces designed as general classrooms, Lee said in an interview. Art instruction “has never been in a place it was designed for,” he said.
At the ceremony, Rebecca Carolan, a studio art major, described the strong art community at the university and the immediate benefit of having “studios where our elbows don’t rub.”
With art classes currently spread across five buildings, “bringing our whole department under one roof is the gift that goes beyond square footage,” Carolan said.
“As this new building lays a stronger foundation in the arts, these changes can’t help but bleed out into our community,” Carolan said. “The individuals we have to thank for this building have done far more than erect new walls. They are changing the foundation of the culture here in Fort Smith.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/22/2014