innovate arkansas

IDEA Partnerships, LLC and Clayco Realty Group announced that they are embarking on design and pre-leasing of a new, 60,000 SF office and laboratory multi-tenant building in the Arkansas Research and Technology Park.

Expected to be available for occupancy in early 2009, the new building will be the next major expansion of the ARTP, which already is home to UA's Engineering Research Center, the High Density Electronics (HIDEC) Center, Genesis Technology Incubator and the park's first multi-tenant building, the Innovation Center.

Pre-leasing begins immediately, so that the development team can customize the building's overall design and its specific spaces to meet needs of known tenants.

The University of Arkansas Technology Development Foundation, which leads development of the ARTP, selected the IDEA-Clayco team to be the foundation's development partner for this project-based on a competitive process in which several developer proposals were considered.

Said Phil Stafford, UATDF's Executive Director: "We look forward to working with our chosen development partner to expand opportunities for first-rate space options in the park-both for companies already in our existing facilities that need to expand and for additional companies that our technology strategy will grow and attract."

The building will be sited directly across from the Innovation Center and is anticipated to provide office and laboratory space for companies working in the areas of clean technologies, advanced electronics, nanotechnology and biotechnology and will provide private companies proximity to shared research resources such as HiDEC, NCREPT and the RFID Center. Its design will be complementary to the Innovation Center and will help to form the campus environment contemplated by the park's overall master plan. Chris Cedergreen of St. Louis, Missouri, is design architect. Stock & Associates will be the project's civil engineers, and Clayco (parent company of Clayco Realty Group) will be construction manager.

Bill Morlok, managing member of IDEA Partnerships said: "We are hoping to quickly identify tenants for pre‐leasing, as that will provide us the best opportunity to move forward with a design that truly meets tenant needs and with financing and construction."

IDEA Partnerships, based in Great Falls, Va. and Philadelphia, Pa., is a specialized developer that only undertakes projects like research parks-in partnership with universities. Clayco Realty Group has developed a wide variety of office, lab, industrial and business park projects. Its parent corporation, Clayco, is a nationally prominent construction and design-build firm.

(This article was originally published in the University of Arkansas Technology Development Foundation's March 2008 newsletter, Cultivating Big Ideas.)