The Arkansas State University System Board of Trustees late Wednesday approved the $430,000 sale of a house in Jonesboro that was previously used as a chancellor’s residence and is now “nonessential to operations.”
The system owns the property at 3613 Lacoste Drive in the RidgePoint subdivision, and the offer it received from a prospective buyer is $5,000 more than its appraised value of $425,000.
Spokesman Jeff Hankins told Arkansas Business by email that the home was originally purchased in 2007 as a residence for the Jonesboro campus chancellor because the ASU System president was living in another university-owned home on Nettleton Avenue.
But the board voted in 2010 to relocate the system office to Little Rock, so the president moved out of the Nettleton Avenue home and A-State Chancellor Kelly Damphousse moved into it. Damphousse still resides there.
Since then, the Lacoste Drive home has been used as a residence for university and athletics personnel through either contractual agreements or lease payments, Hankins said. Trooper Taylor, an assistant football coach, was its most recent resident; the home has been vacant since the summer of 2019.
The board aimed to sell the home in 2011, “but the market was challenging and we did not receive an acceptable offer until now,” Hankins said.
