Arkansas Oklahoma Gas/Summit Utilities has leased 28,000 SF of office space at the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education building on Fianna Way in Fort Smith.
Real estate firm Moses Tucker Partners of Little Rock, which represents the landlord and the property’s management and leasing firm, announced the arrangement Monday. The 10-year lease will give AOG/Summit half of the fifth floor of the massive 318,000-SF building, former headquarters of Golden Living, a successor company to nursing home chain Beverly Enterprises.
Summit, which bought AOG in 2017, closed a $2.15 billion deal in January to buy CenterPoint Energy’s natural gas distribution infrastructure in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Summit has about 625,000 total customers, including a half-million in Arkansas. AOG serves about 60,000 gas customers in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.
AOG/Summit will take occupancy immediately to begin what’s projected to be a $1.5 million to $2 million improvement project. Construction is scheduled for completion at the end of the year. The utility’s lease will also give it some space on the first floor of the five-story building. Ghan & Cooper Commercial Properties of Fort Smith represented AOG/Summit in the deal.
“The Summit Utilities transaction represents a major win for ACHE and Fort Smith and cements the organizations continued commitment to developing long-term growth in Fort Smith and Arkansas,” said a statement by Matthew Beachboard, brokerage director at Moses Tucker Partners. Paul Esterer, a principal and northwest Arkansas president of Moses Tucker, said the firm was honored to work with ACHE and Fort Smith leaders. “Kyle Parker and the team at ACHE are developing legacy projects that we believe will transform the region.”
About 47,500 SF of third-floor space and about 25,000 SF on the fifth floor remain available for lease, according to Moses Tucker leasing agents Eric Nelson, Kane Whitt and Beachboard.
The Colleges of Health Education bought the property in 2020 and moved in its AHCE Biological Research Labs, becoming the largest research institution of any osteopathic school in the nation.
Moses Tucker is the second largest commercial brokerage and management firm in Arkansas, based in Little Rock with an office in Bentonville. It has about 8.3 million SF of commercial space under management in Arkansas, and about 100 employees.
Denver-based Summit Utilities Inc. operates about 23,400 miles of gas lines and pipes in the country, with customers in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Missouri and Oklahoma. Summit hired nearly 600 CenterPoint team members to its workforce, bringing the employee count to about 1,000.
ACHE is a private nonprofit school of osteopathic medicine on 430 acres in Fort Smith. Its inaugural class of 143 graduated in May 2021.
