The Arkansas Colleges of Health Education said it had purchased the former corporate office building of Golden Living in Fort Smith.
The osteopathic medical school did not release the price it paid, nor has the transaction been filed with Sebastian County. When the 318,000-SF building was originally listed in 2018, the sales price was $15.95 million; the five-story building sits on more than 60 acres of land on Fianna Way.
The medical school plans to renovate and rename the building the ACHE Research Institute & Wellness Center. The center will focus on holistic health research.
The school said it would relocate one of its labs and occupy more than one-third of the building's capacity. ACHE said it had hired Thomas Yorio, an osteopathic professor, to consult in the redesign of the research facility.
"We are ecstatic to announce that we will be relocating our ACHE Biological Research Lab to this new location, taking its current space from 7,000-SF to a massive 120,000-SF state-of-the-art research facility," said ACHE CEO Kyle Parker. "This new location will make us the largest research institution of any osteopathic school in the nation. We will now have the space to focus on other types of research."
The office building has current tenants as well. ACHE said Newmark Moses Tucker Partners of Little Rock will handle the building's management and future tenant leases.
