After looking around, the solution was to remove the NDK designation from my preferences.
Android Studio → Preferences → System Settings → Android SDK → SDK Tools → Unselect NDK → Apply button.
Project and Gradle compiled fine after that and I was able to move on with my project work.
As far as why this is happening, I do not know but for more info on NDK check out: https://developer.android.com/ndk/
I will go back and enable these libraries but for now.
