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Investment, Jobs Buoy Fort Smith’s Chaffee Crossing

6 min read

Chaffee Crossing isn’t slowing down any time soon.

The 7,000-acre Army surplus property continues to be a popular development destination in its new civilian life.

The acreage has hosted a spate of expansion and relocation announcements during the past year. Bob Cooper has been on both sides of those announcements, as an agent for the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority and as an investor.

“There’s so much going on out there,” said Cooper, a partner with RH Ghan & Cooper Commercial Partners. “It has taken off.”

Cooper, who represents the FCRA in land deals, bought 14 acres with his partner in the area to develop into a shopping center. Cooper paid $40,000 an acre for the land, quite an increase from the $17,500 each acre brought as recently as 2009.

Cooper said there has been a lot of activity in the past six months coming on the heels of several well-publicized announcements. In May, ArcBest Corp. of Fort Smith said it would build a second headquarters at Chaffee, following the news

earlier in the year that an osteopathic medical school would be built there.

Combined, the two projects total $62 million in investment and more than 1,000 jobs. More importantly, they stoked the already-glowing embers of Chaffee Crossing, part of the former Fort Chaffee.

“It will be a great area to be in,” said Ivy Owen, the executive director of the FCRA. “Between the medical school and ArcBest and I-49, they’re going to be game changers. When the medical school broke ground, people popped out of the woodwork. Housing is a big demand here. The housing developers are very happy. It has been a good couple of years for them.”

More jobs are coming. Companies such as Umarex USA, Mars PetCare and Phoenix Metals are among those that have announced moves or expansions in the area. Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders said he recently hosted some visiting businessmen from Tulsa who were impressed with their tour of Chaffee.

“They were stunned about the amount of construction going on,” Sanders said. “There’s a lot going on that we don’t fully realize the impact it’s having. The expectation all along was Chaffee Crossing would provide the city great opportunities not only for business but also recreation and residential. That is exactly what has happened.

“We’ve seen things crank up.”

Cooper, the authority’s real estate man, said ArcBest and the medical school are having an immense secondary effect on Chaffee Crossing. His own development, University Plaza, will be across the street from the future medical school on Frontier Road, and he has been in contact with numerous retailers, such as grocery stores, gas stations and banks about locating in the plaza.

It’s the jobs in or coming to the area that are attracting the commercial and residential entities that serve those employees, Cooper said. Once the ArcBest headquarters and medical school start getting built, Cooper said, he predicts even more interest.

“They have put Chaffee Crossing on the map even more,” Cooper said. “We believe activity will skyrocket. The momentum has been amazing. People will see that the dream is a reality.”

The Interstate 49 Link

The next big piece for Chaffee Crossing has been a bit of a tantalizing tease: the completion of the Interstate 49 link, a 6.5-mile stretch that will connect state Highway 59 in Van Buren with U.S. Highway 71 in southeast Fort Smith. The link was scheduled to be completed by the end of this year but is now expected to be finished in early 2015.

FCRA officials traveled last week to south Arkansas to see the opening of the interstate at the Arkansas-Louisiana border. The completed interstate will eventually connect Canada with New Orleans, and Fort Smith’s profile should only increase with its location at the intersection of I-49 and I-40.

Owen said the stretch of interstate will send 35,000 cars daily through Chaffee Crossing, where there will be three exits. Cooper said almost all of those interchanges have long been scooped up by investors.

“It’s going to mean accessibility, visibility, traffic,” Owen said.

Owen said of the original 7,000 acres donated to the FCRA about 2,200 are left for sale. Cooper said there are a few larger parcels left but a majority of the acres are for “specialized” investors, i.e., those who want to build a small shopping center on 14 acres or a gas station on 1.5 acres.

An example is 11 acres sold to a group that plans to open a retail center called Frontier Point near the Arkansas Highway & Transportation office on Frontier Road, which makes up most of the northern border of Chaffee Crossing.

“It definitely isn’t slowing down,” Cooper said. “On a weekly basis, we get 10 to 12 meetings or property showings, where we take clients out to the sites. There are a lot of calls and emails other than that. There has been a lot of interest in the last six months.”

Owen said the trajectory of the crossing’s land sales have gone according to plan, other than ArcBest’s announcement. Owen said ArcBest is a very tight-lipped company when it comes to telling the public, or anybody really, of its plans.

“When I got the phone call from ArcBest, they said they were interested in Chaffee,” Owen said. “I was surprised because we weren’t recruiting them. Of course, I said, ‘Well, come on.’”

It’s the same message he continues to send out to every other potential investor. Owen said the authority predicted at the end of 2012 that land sales would drop in total acreage as investors began to build on what they had bought and begin to generate tax revenue.

“We’ve been selling land since 2007,” Owen said. “We expect more land sales. We still have land to sell. We just don’t have the big chunks. We have smaller parcels. Our land sales will even out.”

One Blank Spot

There is only blank spot on Owen’s wish list, he said. Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas Inc. announced in October 2009 that it would build a $100 million wind turbine manufacturing plant at Chaffee Crossing, but the completed building remains unoccupied.

“The No. 1 thing I would like to see is to get the Mitsubishi building occupied,” Owen said. “Everything is there — it just looks like they are out to lunch. When Congress took the wind subsidy away, the wind market went to hell in a hand basket.

“It’s not a plant that can be used by anybody. It’s a big equipment manufacturing building. You don’t find those tenants hanging out on the street corner.”

‘A Community Effort’

Owen said anyone who buys into the area, whether it is commercial or residential, has to meet the authority’s specific guidelines. Everything has to go according to the authority’s preplanned vision.

“We have to make sure it develops the way we planned for it to be developed,” Owen said. “Before they get building permits, they have to meet our specs and guidelines. It’s quality everything.”

The trade-off is that FCRA takes the money its makes from land sales and reinvests it into the area’s infrastructure. That is why Owen can guarantee developers that when they start turning dirt, the water, sewer and roads will be there for them. The authority donated 200 acres for the osteopathic medical school.

When Owen took over at FCRA in 2007, he thought the area had a ton of potential. He has seen that optimism proved correct in part, Owen said, because all the cities, counties and school districts involved have cooperated for the good of all.

“Without teamwork, none of this would have happened,” Owen said. “Everybody is pitching in. This is the first time the region has seen all the people pulling the rope in the same direction. It’s definitely a community effort.”

It’s the entire community that is going to be continued to be rewarded. Cooper said the future of Chaffee Crossing is just as promising as its recent past.

“It has been amazing,” Cooper said. “It will only get better.”

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