Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame announced Thursday a $300,000 pledge from Southland Park Gaming and Racing in West Memphis that will enable Pulaski County to complete a conference center adjacent to the museum inside Verizon Arena in downtown North Little Rock.

The center will entail 12,200-SF of unused space under the southwest stands. The space was intended to serve as a basketball practice facility for UALR, which played its home basketball games in the arena before constructing its own on-campus facility.

The center, which was dedicated in 2010, will be adjacent to the 13,975-SF museum and named for longtime museum supporters Jimmie Lou and Floyd Sagely of Fort Smith. The Sagely Center's main hall will be named in honor of Jeremy M. Jacobs, CEO of Southland's parent company Delaware North. Jacobs owns the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League and is chairman of the NHL board of governors.

The conference center originally was set to be called the Six Bridges Innovation Center. It will seat 500 for dinner and 750 for receptions, and will be designed to accommodate smaller meetings as well. The center will complement museum activities but will serve as a public venue, said museum executive director Ray Tucker.

"This will be a tremendous asset to the downtown area," he said.

The county received $1 million in federal funding for the construction of the center. Tucker said official quorum court approval is the next step, followed by the bid process. Once that is complete, Tucker said construction should take "six to eight months."

The conference center technically will be underground and located just to the south of the museum's main entrance on the west side of the arena. The space opens up to the arena, affording it access to arena catering and other services.

At the 2010 dedication, Taggart Foster Currence Gray Architects and Vratsinas Construction Co. were named to the project.

The non-profit Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame has existed since 1958, and its museum was opened in what was then Alltel Arena in 2007.

Floyd Sagely is a former football and basketball standout at the University of Arkansas who played in the NFL with San Francisco and St. Louis in the 1950s. He was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1985.

In addition to Thursday's pledge, Southland has donated $1 million to Mid South Community College in West Memphis for the Southland Greyhand Science Center, $1 million to Mid South for its hospitality program and kitchen incubator project, and $250,000 to help launch an athletics program at Mid South.

Southland opened in 1956 and is the region's only greyhound racing track. Jacobs' family was the original concession operator for the park when it opened.