By Derek Spellman

dspellman@joplinglobe.com

NEOSHO, Mo. — It was a day to look to the future and the past.

Several hundred people gathered Friday at Crowder College’s newly minted Arnold Farber Building to celebrate the dedication of both the building and the nearby Tatum Bell Tower. The former structure was named for a late Neosho banker, Arnold Farber, while the latter is named for James Tatum, the president of the college’s Board of Trustees.

Tatum has been on the board for more than four decades and was among those who helped push for the ballot measure that established the college in the early 1960s.

He reflected on the college’s origins Friday. Challenges that supporters faced then, he said, included the acquisition of property for the school and the winning of voters’ support for the plan.

“No one could have predicted what we are witnessing today,” he said while standing before a panoramic window at the Farber Building. “No one.”

The two-story, 47,000-square-foot Arnold Farber Building houses a conference center; a library that is more than double the size of the old one; new offices for admissions and financial aid; a bookstore; and nine new classrooms that will provide seating for 215 students.

The Farber building cost approximately $7.5 million and was funded by a mixture of bond money, donations and state funding.

There are a few items still to be completed on the outside of the Farber Building, said Alan Marble, president of Crowder College. That work includes landscaping, a repaved parking lot, new outdoor lighting and new sidewalks to link with other buildings.

Prominently located at the front of the campus, the Farber Building provides a “primary entry point” to Crowder and gives the campus’ confines a diamond shape.

The configuration, said Kent Farnsworth, a former Crowder College president who also spoke during the dedication ceremonies, “establishes that sense of campus that we were looking for so many years.”

And at the heart of the campus: the 42-foot Tatum Bell Tower which showcases a mixture of the old and the new. The two bells inside the tower were originally cast in the late 1800s, Marble said, while satellites control the setting of its clock.

Marble said college officials hope the completion of the Farber Building and Tatum Bell Tower will help usher in a several large building projects over the next several years.

The college tentatively plans to break ground next spring on its Missouri Alternative and Renewable Energy Technology (MARET) Center. The first construction phase could include a new incubation center for new businesses; renewable-energy laboratories or workshops; and space for the school's construction technology program; and office space.