DALLAS — The University of Arkansas' 20-year master plan for its Fort Smith campus is expected to require about $200 million, according to chancellor Paul Beran.
Beran presented the plan in a presentation to the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce on the UAFS campus Friday, according to the Fort Smith Times Record.
"We're not going to put the institution at financial risk," Beran said in his introduction to the master plan posted on the university's Web site. "It's an evolutionary process dependent on money raised."
Known as Westark College before joining the University of Arkansas System in 2002, UAFS evolved from a community college founded in 1928 in a Fort Smith high school.
Fort Smith on the Oklahoma border is the second largest city in Arkansas in a metro area of nearly 300,000 people.
The University of Arkansas System issued $13 million of student-fee revenue bonds for the Fort Smith campus in 2005 that carried ratings of Aa3 by Moody's Investors Service with stable outlooks.
The Moody's rating improved in June 2013 to Aa2 for a $29.7 million issue of revenue bonds for the UA System's Little Rock campus, the second-largest behind the flagship Fayetteville campus.
Enrollment at the Fort Smith campus is expected to reach about 9,000 by 2033 from the current estimate of 7,000, Beran said.
