Michael Tilley with Talk Business & Politics joins us to help rewind some of the week's news. Welcome back, Michael.
Tilley: Thanks for having me.
Kellams: Let's talk about some of that news, including work beginning on the latest training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base. This just moves us along, doesn't it?
Tilley: Yeah, it keeps moving. This foreign pilot training center here at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith — it's co-located with the Fort Smith Regional Airport. This was announced a couple of years ago, actually three or four years ago. They're going to be training pilots from different countries — Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Singapore, just a long list of countries — in the F-35 fighter. They're now here. You can hear them every morning and sometimes in the evening.
So when I say what happened this week kind of made it feel real, I know that's going to sound crazy because they've been here and you can hear them. But to see this 44,000-square-foot academic center — they're starting work on it. It's one of the first permanent facilities. They've got some temporary facilities, some temporary hangars up. This $74 million facility, they're going to get it started.
What was interesting at the groundbreaking event Wednesday — you've been to many groundbreaking events, no big deal — but then Brig. Gen. George Walter, he's with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is managing most, if not all, of the design and construction there on the base. He got up and said, "I know this is a two-year project, but we're going to get it done in 18 months." And he said it in such a way that you knew he wasn't kidding. There was a little of that nervous laughter in the crowd, but he meant it. That kind of dominated the rest of the conversation, the questions. So we'll see if they can stick to that. That's a significant cut — six months cut in the construction time. And when we were talking to some of the other Corps of Engineers folks and military folks, you could tell they didn't know that was coming. That was kind of a surprise.
This will be an interesting center. It's going to have four F-35 simulators in it. Most of the simulators they now train on are down at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. So they'll have those here, plus classroom space. It was interesting to hear Lt. Gen. Clark Quinn. He's head of the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command. He was pretty honest — if anyone's ever been to Ebbing, it's a small base, not a lot of land. He talked about how it was, his term was, "incredibly complex" to try to put another military base on what's already a military base. The 188th Wing is already there, and his quote was the planners "needed to have a lot of imagination to see the future." But then he went on to explain that they've done a good job and they're able to incorporate it well.
It's a large project. The estimate is around $800 million to get this set up, could rise up to $1.2 billion. Roughly $600 million in federal funds, I think, is the most recent number that has been appropriated for the project. But there's been a lot going on out there. So when I say it kind of made it feel real on Wednesday, again that may sound silly to some folks, but here we go. Kind of the first project going up.
Kellams: Well, if the only project the Girl Scouts did was get me 10 to 50 boxes of Thin Mints a year, I would say it's worth it. But we know the Girl Scouts do more. And there's some new news with the Girl Scouts in the River Valley.
Tilley: Yeah, it's an amazing bit of news. I know we normally cover business and politics, but I think this is just as important, if not more. Part of a regional economy and its culture is having an open, inviting, comfortable space for young girls to learn, explore and be themselves. And that's what Burnham Woods is. It's this amazing Girl Scouts property. It's a 13.5-acre campus right in the middle of Fort Smith. The Girl Scouts often call it a wooded oasis, and you may think that's hard to do in the middle of a city of 90,000 people.
But look, I'm from rural Arkansas. I know what it means to be out in the middle of nothing, and this place can take you there. You are in the middle of Fort Smith, but you can be forgiven for thinking you're in the middle of nowhere. It's wooded, it's a lot of trails. They've just completed a $1.3 million modernization effort. It has a new arts building, more classrooms, an updated STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math — improved camping facilities, and a newly added woodshop. The girls can learn not only the skills but the tools to work with wood-related design projects.
They officially opened that this week. It's available for the more than 4,200 girls that are in the Girl Scouts — Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, because it includes parts of those states. Great facility, good for the Girl Scouts for raising money. There were a lot of private donations that made it happen. And if you have any connection to the Girl Scouts, I would encourage you to use it, get out there and give this great space a look.
Kellams: Speaking of openings, there's an opening that's deeply rooted in Fort Smith history, because if you think back to the 1800s, Fort Smith was a manufacturing place. They were making wagons and then furniture, all the way up through Whirlpool. UofA Fort Smith is continuing that legacy with something that was ceremoniously opened this week.
Tilley: Yes, and that's a great intro. They opened an advanced manufacturing lab, a workforce development center, and they'll eventually open, as part of that, what they call a manufacturing academy. The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith received just under $7 million — they received $5.7 million from the state of Arkansas, and most of that was passed through grants from federal legislation. ABB, which has a manufacturing operation here in Fort Smith — ABB is the company that bought Baldor Electric, some people may remember that name — they developed this facility.
When I walked in, it's this huge, clean-room-looking space and it looks like they could perform surgeries there. It's packed with a lot of equipment that you don't want people like me around, but they let us tour the space. Some of it looks like it could be a scene from Star Trek, but it's some of the most advanced manufacturing equipment.
The goal is, if Arkansas and Fort Smith are going to boost the number of manufacturing jobs — because it's a sector that's really struggled to keep jobs — they're going to need places like this, where folks can go learn real-world manufacturing skills so they can be part of an available workforce or work with an existing employer. Part of it includes a new Bachelor of Science in Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, which is a plus for companies wanting to either move to the Fort Smith area or expand their existing manufacturing.
The manufacturing academy, which is supposed to get kicked off later this year — they can take people who are either unemployed or underemployed, train them for 100 hours, and then they have the skills to begin as a production operator or assembler in a manufacturing plant. So it's a great advantage for manufacturing companies that are here or may want to come to Fort Smith. I'm glad it's part of the community, and it'll be interesting to see what kind of results it delivers.
Kellams: Well, if manufacturing is part of Fort Smith's legacy, also part of the city's legacy is Judge Jim Spears, who was just a wonderful guy and has left us as of early this week.
Tilley: He died. He was 80 years old. I think he packed about 160 years into those 80 years. I'm not going to try to explain all of his accomplishments, but we call him judge because he was a circuit court judge for a long time. He's best known for all of his community efforts. And I just want to highlight two — there were many, and forgive me for those listeners who know all of the things he has done.
He was part of the effort to recruit the U.S. Marshals Museum to Fort Smith, which turned out to be a successful effort. He served on the U.S. Marshals Museum board for a long time. He was a passionate advocate for that. He went to law school, but he was a history and political science graduate from Arkansas Tech University, so history was a passion of his.
He also was part of a core group of folks who started the Bass Reeves Legacy Initiative some 20-something years ago. Bass Reeves was a U.S. deputy marshal under Judge Parker. He was born a slave. He was illiterate, but he captured more outlaws than anyone else. Just a great history there. They wanted to create a large statue. I'm not too proud to admit that when Judge Spears first was telling me this idea — he said it's going to be more than life-size, it's going to be 20 or 30 feet tall and we're going to raise several hundred thousand dollars to do this, and we're going to place it right there as you come off the bridge into Fort Smith — I remember thinking, yeah, okay, sure, whatever. Well, they pulled it off. They raised $307,000. Now there's a 25-foot-tall statue there. I dare you to go look at Arkansas tourism images and their website and some of the publications and not find that statue as part of their Arkansas tourism marketing efforts.
His latest project was this historic Butterfield Trail Stagecoach line stop. There was a line stop in Fort Smith, and he met in February with the Central Business Improvement District — they help develop stuff in downtown Fort Smith — to establish this monument. CBID Commissioner Phil White kind of took it on and it's going to happen. They found some folks to pull it together. Some folks have donated materials, there's been some money donated. And so there will be this relatively large monument recognizing the Butterfield Trail Stagecoach. I encourage anyone to go look that up and see why it's important. It's going to be right across the street from the Bass Reeves statue, right across from Garrison Avenue.
Just an amazing legacy. A lot of people commented on social media and other places about the impact he had. So a big loss. But I think the thing that people like Judge Spears leave — they leave a template. You may miss him, but you know how it was done. He was very passionate, very selfless. He was able to pull people together and he really focused on the right things. I think that's a good recipe for anyone else that wants to follow in his footsteps.
You can read more about Judge Jim Spears and everything else we've talked about at talkbusiness.net. Michael, enjoy your weekend. Look forward to talking to you again.
Tilley: As always, I appreciate it.
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