$27 million Hunt Center a game changer for Razorbacks

The weight room is shown Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, inside the Hunt Baseball Development Center in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas baseball coach Dave Van Horn had a palace, but needed to learn how to efficiently show it off. 

In size alone, the three-story, 49,000-square-foot Hunt Baseball Development Center can be overwhelming. With so much to showcase inside, Van Horn and his staff called upon a player-turned-real estate agent to learn best practices to guide recruits and others on a tour of the building.

“It’s not a hard place to show, that’s for sure,” said Kyle Atkins, who lettered for the Razorbacks from 2010-11 and co-owns Arkansas Real Estate Group. “There are tons of amazing features. What I tried to do was zero in on everything that’s a ‘wow’ factor, helping them walk in spaces that as soon as you walk in the door, they catch your attention.” 

With all the details $27 million can buy, there are attention grabbing moments waiting around every corner inside the Razorbacks’ new home. They include a clubhouse on par with the highest levels of baseball, spacious meeting and recreational areas for players and a centralized weight room that seems to anchor the building.

Other additions include new coaches' offices, indoor training areas and a tunnel to the Razorbacks' new dugout on the first base side of Baum-Walker Stadium. 

The building was designed to "flow," Van Horn said. For instance, the players enter the building through a door next to the team equipment room, where their jerseys are placed in individual lockers across from the hall from the clubhouse.

In another area of the building, the nutrition area is just steps away from the weight room and work areas for team doctors and trainers.

And in yet another wing is an indoor pitching lab that leads to the team's outdoor bullpen in right field.

According to Van Horn, an in-depth tour requires at least 1 hour, 15 minutes. 

"It's like the Ritz-Carlton," Atkins said. "I think the only thing that's not in there is Ruth's Chris." 

PHOTOS: Hunt Baseball Development Center tour

Atkins advised the staff to bring tourists in from the upper level and down a staircase that overlooks a museum with trophies and displays that tell the story of the Razorbacks’ baseball history.

“There’s something about looking down in that open space and seeing all that," Atkins said, "that's pretty amazing.

“We’re so captivated by moments. We’re scrolling through Instagram and you’ve got guys who stop on pictures. It’s the instant gratification that catches your attention. And then you walk in a place like that and it kind of takes you aback. It just keeps going and going and going, all the amazing things that are in there.”

Due to the timing of baseball recruiting, which is done largely at younger ages than most other sports, the building — which opened last summer — did not help the Razorbacks a lot in their 2022 or 2023 recruiting classes, but it has had the desired effect on younger recruits who have seen it. 

“You’ve got to get players,” Van Horn said. “You can coach guys up, but you’ve got to have good players. This building is going to help us get more players.”

Van Horn calls the building "white collar," a contrast from the blue-collar label attached to his teams. He said he makes sure the building doesn't change his team.

"We make them pick up, clean up, act right," Van Horn said. 

The Hunt Center is similar to the Razorbacks’ Smith Center for football operations. That probably tells you everything you need to know about the magnitude of the building. Few, if any, other college baseball programs have a space that rivals SEC football teams. 

“Just about every day I walk in, I just kind of shake my head, thinking, ‘Wow, this is amazing,’” Van Horn said. “How far has college baseball come in the 20 years I’ve been here?”

The answer: a long way, especially at Arkansas. 

When Van Horn interviewed for the job in 2002, he told then-athletics director Frank Broyles he wanted three things promised in writing before he accepted. 

He wanted the baseball coaches’ offices moved to the baseball stadium from the football stadium about 1 1/2 miles away. He also wanted the Razorbacks' outdoor batting cages to be enclosed. 

Van Horn’s biggest request was to expand the seating of the stadium, which at the time had a capacity of around 3,300. 

Broyles, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to the expansion and hired Van Horn away from Nebraska on the heels of the Cornhuskers' consecutive trips to the College World Series. Baum-Walker Stadium has been expanded and upgraded multiple times since and now has a listed capacity of 11,531. 

But the Razorbacks haven’t limited renovations to the park itself. In 2015, Arkansas opened the 52,000-square-foot Fowler Family Training Center, a state-of-the-art indoor practice facility. 

The stadium and the adjacent indoor facility and operations building have dramatically changed the look of the Razorbacks' ballpark.

"I was telling (Arkansas volunteer coach and former third baseman) Bobby Wernes the other day, it's crazy that I've been gone just long enough that I go back...and it's starting to feel different," Atkins said. 

"I think about the culture of Dave Van Horn teams and how tough and competitive they are. When you do that with consistency, year over year, great things come from it."

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The return on baseball investment has been solid. The Razorbacks are in the midst of arguably the best stretch in program history with a five-year record of 200-79. During that time — which includes a season predominantly canceled by covid-19 — Arkansas has played in the College World Series twice, won or shared three SEC West championships and was SEC regular-season and tournament champion a year ago.

The Razorbacks lost in the College World Series championship round in 2018.

“This facility as a whole, everything, and our indoor across the street, it’s all part of it,” Van Horn said. “It’s amazing. There’s more universities that are looking around and they’re watching TV and they’re seeing our crowds and what our league has been doing, and their fans are jumping in and helping out with some support and finance. I don’t think it’s going to go away.”

With all of the additions, Van Horn said all that is left to potentially upgrade baseball at Arkansas is a new playing surface or more seats at Baum-Walker Stadium. 

“There's always going to be some something technology-wise that will improve your scouting of other teams or whatever, and we try to stay up with that,” Van Horn said, “but I think probably what we're going to need, honestly, and Frank Broyles thought I was crazy when I said that in the summer of 2002, we're going to need more seats here. You know, there's people that are not happy that didn't get season tickets, and I don't blame them. And there's people, groups of people that want those skyboxes or suites — whatever you want to call them — and they're probably maybe the most popular suites on campus because we play a lot of games."

Van Horn is in no hurry for additional seating. He understands how good he has it already and acknowledges "it's probably somebody else's turn on campus to get something done."

But Van Horn envisions one day having a park that could hold in the range of 17,000 spectators for games on big conference weekends or in the NCAA postseason. Due to limited ticket inventory, Van Horn said he was told of four-figure ticket prices on the secondary market for postseason games at Arkansas a year ago. 

"You know, when you hear that somebody's paying $1,500 to watch a college baseball game, it's a little crazy," Van Horn said. "I might pay $1,500 to go to the Super Bowl if the Chiefs are in it, but other than that I'm not doing it. 

“There's Mississippi State and Ole Miss and they get 13,000 to 14,000 in their place, and I don't think those places are bigger than Northwest Arkansas. If you put a good team on the field, they'll show up.”