Members of the Arkansas Board of Corrections attend a meeting at the North Little Rock headquarters on Feb. 12, 2025. Left to right: Lona McCastlain, William “Dubs” Byers, Chairman Benny Magness, Lee Watson, Brandon Tollett, Grant Hodges. Board member Alonza Jiles attended remotely. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)
The Arkansas Board of Corrections on Thursday tentatively approved a $57 million contract with two architectural engineering firms chosen in April to design a planned 3,000-bed prison on 815 acres of land in Franklin County.
The board agreed to meet and discuss the contract again sometime before June 10 in case members had any qualms about it being on the agenda of the legislative subcommittee responsible for further approving it.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced in March 2023 her intent to have the state build the mega-prison, and the Board of Corrections has greenlit a series of steps in the past several months to get the project off the ground while the state Legislature has been less approving.
Omaha, Neb.-based HDR and Little Rock-based Cromwell Architects Engineers will be the contracted design team, pending legislative approval. The board chose the two firms in April and chose the partnership of Nabholz Construction of Conway and J.E. Dunn Construction of Kansas City, Missouri, as the general contractor for the prison earlier this month.
Vanir Construction Management Inc. has been the prison’s project manager since October 2024, and Vanir “led the charge” on the architectural contract, “leaning heavily on their experience in this business,” Corrections Secretary Lindsay Wallace told the corrections board Thursday.
“We’re going to design — or at least let you understand what it would cost to do — what 3,000 beds would look like, and then allow the state to choose how much [it’s] actually going to build based on how much is actually appropriated to use to build,” Vanir project manager Luann Salado said. “But we have to start somewhere.”
A $750 million appropriation bill to support the prison’s construction died after five failed votes in the Senate in April. State officials and Franklin County residents have fought against the project, citing concerns about transparency, infrastructure and staffing.
The appropriation would have covered the remainder of the projected $825 million cost of the project. An additional $75 million appropriated in 2022 for prison expansion has already been allocated to the Arkansas Department of Corrections, which can use the funding to move the project forward.
The Legislature also set aside another $330 million for the project in 2023 that hasn’t been appropriated yet.
Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, said May 5 that he does not anticipate a special legislative session this year to address the failed $750 million appropriation.
Board member Lee Watson expressed concern Thursday that only part of the required 3,000-bed design might come to fruition due to funding constraints.
“If we utilize two-thirds of it and we stop, and then two or three years later the state picks this back up and decides to add 1,000 beds, that kind of makes me scratch my head a little,” he said.
Watson asked Corrections Department Chief Financial Officer Chad Brown if it would be “kosher within our budgeting process” to pay for the full design.
Brown said the contract will be a “pay as we go” arrangement as long as the total payment remains under an “authority dollar amount.” The contract allows the state to withdraw from it with seven days’ notice.
Watson and board chairman Benny Magness said it bothered them that the contract mentioned Franklin County by name, and Watson said he hoped the contract would “allow for the possibility that we may have to begin with another location” if the Franklin County site has “issues that preclude it” from being used.
Some of the local frustration over the 815 acres of Franklin County land for the prison comes from the Indigenous Chickamauga Nation, which has said the project could have a negative impact on its burial sites in the area.
The HDR Cromwell contract has a clause that states the Board of Corrections will “appropriately adjust” if anything in the project will “materially change,” Wallace said.
The Arkansas Legislative Council’s Review subcommittee next meets June 17 and will be responsible for approving the HDR Cromwell contract before it goes to the full council for final approval.
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