How Jonesboro Is Winning Commercial Real Estate Investment with Jerry L. Halsey Jr.

Jerry Halsey President & CEO of Halsey Real Estate of Jonesboro (Photo provided)

Halsey rebranded Halsey Real Estate last year after buying the outstanding ownership interests in the firm formerly known as Halsey Thrasher Harpole.

What are some of the biggest commercial real estate developments in northeast Arkansas currently?

Right now, the two biggest on the drawing board are Greensborough Village — a Halsey Real Estate development that’s expected to see more than $100 million in new construction begin in 2026 — and the Southern Hills development that Carroll Caldwell and Prateek Gera are putting together. Out in the industrial park, you’ve got InnovAsian Cuisine, a subsidiary of Japan-based Nichirei Foods, building a 175,000-SF frozen food manufacturing facility in Craighead Technology Park. They’re investing approximately $105 million and bringing around 200 new jobs. We already have nearly 100 manufacturing facilities employing more than 11,000 people, so they’re joining a community that knows how to support advanced manufacturing. Then you’ve got the Ridge Sports Complex being built at more than $70 million. That’s hundreds of millions in new investment started or committed just this year.

What types of deals does Jonesboro lose to other markets, and why? What would it take to win them?

I don’t know that we’re losing deals to other markets so much as we’re losing deals right now because of the economics. We’re stuck in the middle. The rents that tenants are willing to pay haven’t reached what the cost of building requires. You’ve got some tenants willing to pay $40-plus per SF, but others are saying that’s above what they can make work economically. There’s older generation space that’s more market-rate, and a lot of that is due to demand and to rehabs bringing those properties back up. I think it’ll adjust itself over time. We went through something similar in the early 2000s with new construction costs outpacing rents. Jonesboro’s economy has shown consistent resilience, growing steadily for more than 50 years and serving as the economic hub for more than 15 counties in the region, a foundation that gives the market real staying power through cycles like this.

Having gone through the planning and development of Jonesboro’s Greensborough Village, what advice would you give a developer who is just beginning a project of similar size and scope?

Are you willing to take a punch and roll with it? That’s the real question. We got the concept from Nashville — a mixed-use development model that really resonated with us — and put together a delegation from Jonesboro, including Arkansas State University, City Water & Light, the city of Jonesboro and other key stakeholders, to go see it firsthand. We came home energized, but quickly discovered there was no existing zoning for what we were trying to accomplish, so we spent a year rewriting the zoning just to do what we wanted to do. Then we had unexpected zoning and tax fights that dragged out another three to six months. Just as we were getting geared up with folks ready to close, contingent on the Malco theater opening, COVID hit and Malco didn’t open, and everything stalled again. The key to surviving all of that was the financial strength of our investors. Jonesboro owes those investors a debt of gratitude, because they had the pocketbooks to stay patient and gave Jonesboro something it wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

How much did the closure of the Turtle Creek Mall due to tornado damage hurt Jonesboro’s economic development?

The tornado was a tragedy and the community suffered real damage. But if there’s one silver lining, it forced a conversation about reinvestment in parts of the city that might otherwise have been overlooked. Everything came back to Caraway Road. We renovated Caraway Plaza around 2014-2016 and re-tenanted it because you couldn’t justify building new. Then developers worked on the corner of Caraway and Highland with Crossroads and the old mall site. We also redeveloped the former Kroger, now a Burlington and Planet Fitness. All of that second-generation space has been upgraded, and I think that’s a huge benefit. Real estate that was being repositioned elsewhere has come back to being the prime location. 

How has Jonesboro’s highway infrastructure and connectivity improved and what still needs to be done?

We’ve made a lot of progress. There’s a new bypass going in on Martin Luther King that will connect the south side of town straight to the north side. If you’re on the south side going to the industrial park, you can get on Interstate 555 and be there in 10 minutes. From there you can keep going to Marked Tree. If you’re going to the steel mills, you take Highway 18 and drive a five-lane highway all the way to Nucor. What still needs to happen is getting connectivity from Lake City straight to Big River Steel. If you can do that, you create a Y — go left on a five-lane road to Nucor, or go right on a major road to Big River Steel. When we complete I-57, you create connectivity to Chicago that allows traffic to flow from Chicago to Dallas without having to go down I-55 and up to I-40. That truck traffic would come down I-57 instead, which would relieve significant congestion on the existing corridors.

What needs to be done to better connect Jonesboro to the northeast Arkansas steel industry?

I’d put it in two buckets — infrastructure and higher education. On the infrastructure side, Nucor and Big River Steel need what Congressman Rick Crawford has presented as a steel loop — essentially connecting I-40, I-55 back up through Blytheville and back to Jonesboro. That loop opens up communities like Caraway, Manila, Leachville and Monette. Those towns were 1,500-2,000 people when I was growing up, and with this connectivity, they could be 10,000-20,000 people in the next 20-30 years. Jonesboro’s metro area has already grown 28% since 2000 to more than 138,000 people, and with the right infrastructure, we can spread that growth regionally instead of concentrating it all in one place. On the higher education side, you’ve got to give Todd Shields credit. He single-handedly went to the steel industry and said, “We are ready to serve. What can we do for you?” Whatever they’ve asked of him, he’s come back with a team and made it happen. A-State is investing nearly $8 million annually in research, including a new Center of Advanced Materials & Steel Manufacturing designed specifically to support the steel industry. 

What’s underrated about the Jonesboro market?

I know “quality of life” is a buzzword, but hear me out. You hit Little Rock traffic or Memphis traffic and it costs you 30-40 minutes. You hit Jonesboro traffic and it costs you 10. People in Germantown and Cordova can drive an hour through Memphis traffic just to get to a Grizzlies game. We can get in the car and be in downtown Memphis in one hour. We can be in downtown Little Rock in an hour 45 to two hours. St. Louis is 3.5 to four hours. You have all of those big-city amenities within reach, and yet you enjoy easy commutes, multiple good school systems — private and public — and a community where everybody knows everybody. The average commute time in Jonesboro is just 17.8 minutes, compared with 26.6 minutes nationally, 24.8 in Nashville and 26.4 in Dallas. And Arkansas State’s $2.5 billion economic impact on the state economy shows how much this region punches above its weight.

What effect might a new Fed chair have on commercial real estate?

If you think the Fed will follow the lead of President Trump, you’re going to get lower interest rates — and I can assure you that helps commercial real estate. There are people chomping at the bit for lower rates right now. You’ve got loans maturing in the next one to three years where borrowers are going from rates that were once around 3.5% to what’s now in the high fives and sixes — you’re essentially close to doubling your interest rate. That leaves you with two choices: Make higher payments or stretch out your amortization to try to maintain cash flow. Everyone I talk to in this space feels like more rate cuts are coming. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment.

How can homes be more affordable to first-time buyers?

Twenty years ago, developers would put a subdivision in, sell off some lots, and a group of builders would develop it out and spread the risk. In the last five years, you’ve seen Lennar and D.R. Horton come in and literally buy all the lots. They’ve taken the inventory. Both are publicly traded companies and among the top five largest homebuilders in the country, and we’ve got them right here in northeast Arkansas. Lennar tends to build at a slightly lower price point, which makes it easier for first-time buyers to get in. D.R. Horton builds a little higher with more amenities. The challenge is that by consolidating lot inventory with two massive builders, you’re not spreading the risk the way you once did, and you’re losing the diversity of local builders coming in at different price points. You don’t see as many new subdivisions coming in with local builders anymore, and that changes the competitive dynamic. That said, Jonesboro is still one of the more affordable cities of its size in the state and Midsouth.