NWACC honors retired plant director with street naming

Students walk across campus at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville in this file photo.
Students walk across campus at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville in this file photo.

BENTONVILLE -- A new city street on the Northwest Arkansas Community College campus will be named Lay Boulevard after Jim Lay, the recently retired physical plant director for the college.

The college's board of trustees decided on the name in a special meeting Friday.

The college had wanted to name the street Jim Lay Boulevard, but the city objected to using both a first and last name, said Lucas Pointer of Bentonville, chairman of the board's Land Use Subcommittee. Lay retired in February after 30 years at the college, Pointer said.

The new street will run east and west, starting off of S.E. Eagle Way just south of that street's intersection with S.E. NWACC Boulevard, according to plans presented at the meeting. The road will run west from there to the new physical plant's location, which is west of the Melba Shewmaker South Region National Child Protection Training Center. The road will loop around the new physical plant with no intersection to any other streets.

The college bought the 3.9 acres for the plant from Mercy Medical Center last year for $450,000. Plans are to convert the current physical plant to space for the college's workforce development programs. The current physical plant is across Eagle Way east of the new site.

The board's action followed a special meeting of the Land Use Subcommittee on Friday. Subcommittee members reached the same decision earlier in an email exchange but were told Monday they should have held a public meeting under the provisions of the state's Freedom of Information Act.

The subcommittee's meeting and the subsequent board meeting Friday were held by video conference and complied with the public meetings law. No other business came up at either the subcommittee meeting nor the meeting of the full board Friday.

Public notice of the special meeting came out Thursday morning.

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