Brightwater Center - Northwest Arkansas Community College

Henderson Engineers provided building systems design services to revitalize a portion of a building previously occupied by Tyson Foods as a processing plant into a culinary arts center that students, staff, and the surrounding community could equally benefit from. The Brightwater Center, home to a brewery/distillery, food markets, teaching kitchens, and coffee bars, is more than your average cooking school — offering opportunities to expand creatively beyond culinary nutrition into food and beverage management and entrepreneurship.

Each of the seven professional teaching kitchens received new make-up air and exhaust fan systems in addition to a new rooftop HVAC unit to service the kitchen’s heat load. The kitchens were provided new panelboards for electrical distribution to the spaces’ 350+ pieces of equipment, revised grease, sanitary sewer and gas piping, and fire connectivity for the kitchen hood Ansul system. Henderson worked closely with the design team members to implement flexible systems within the central corridor of the Brightwater Center to allow it to serve multiple purposes. Transitioning the space from dining hall to events is easy for facility managers as systems seamlessly react to the change in increased traffic and overall use.