
Little Rock voters in November rejected a sales tax increase that included $8 million earmarked for the coffers of the Little Rock Port. That setback hasn’t stopped efforts to expand and improve the port’s inventory of 1,800 acres available for industrial prospects.
“Our war chest is all but empty,” said Bryan Day, executive director of the Port of Little Rock. “One of the things we’re having to do is put together funding strategies using grants, loans and bonds. We’ve done a little bit of all that in the past. Land is our product. If we don’t have any product, we can’t keep growing.”
The city of Little Rock is in the process of buying nearly 500 acres to expand the industrial park westward to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks from its holdings that border the Amazon fulfillment center at 7001 Zeuber Road.
A portion of the new acreage borders the 300,000-SF Elopak plant nearing completion at 6101 Zeuber Road. The first production line of the $95 million project is expected to begin operations in the next few weeks, with a second line to start up in 2026.
The Norwegian company’s first American production facility is anticipated to generate more than 100 jobs making cartons for liquid dairy, juices, plant-based products and liquid eggs.
“We have targeted another 600-700 acres that we hope to put under contract later this year,” Day said. “All of our acquisitions have to be mutually agreeable. We don’t use eminent domain to force a sale.”
The four transactions now in motion encompass 415 acres from William Stephan Koehler and the Kathryn Ann Ratcliffe Koehler estate, $6,685,750 ($16,110 per acre); 48.8 acres from Mark Stivers, $736,980 ($15,100 per acre); 30 acres from Jane M. Baugus Ltd., $55,000 ($1,833 per acre); and 3.95 acres from Catherine Davin, $180,000 ($45,570 per acre).
The range in property valuations reflects different variables such as proximity to existing industrial park land, accessibility to developed roads and how much of a property is tillable farmland. Perhaps the biggest variable is the elevation of a property, how much of the land is out the floodplain or at least 230 feet above sea level.
“With every property we’ve tried to acquire, we started out with the topographic map and what’s above 230 feet in elevation,” said Hank Kelley, CEO of Kelley Commercial Partners, the real estate adviser and agent for the Port of Little Rock.
“The theory behind that is filling ground to bring it out of the floodplain that you can afford to do and in a price range that industry will buy it.”
Acreage in the 237- to 238-foot elevation and above is more expensive, and everything down to 230 is less expensive and below that even less costly.
“It starts with the civil engineers’ review: what’s dry and what’s possible to make dry and what probably will be part of a future wetland program,” Kelley said. “The civil engineering of the property gives us a good start on the process of developing an industrial site, to help them get the property shovel-ready.”
The city has an option to buy an additional block of about 385 acres still under Koehler-Ratcliffe ownership. That property will extend industrial park land south to the westward end of Harper Road.
“We have five years to buy it, which we hope to do sooner,” Day said.
The city of Little Rock recently paid off $3.35 million owed on last April’s purchase of nearly 874 acres from the Jack Tyler Family LLC. The price of the four blocks of land totaled $4.35 million (about $5,000 per acre).
The acquisition extended the industrial park’s holdings southward. Most of the acreage is south of Harper Road between Frazier Pike and Pumpkin Patch Road.
Cone Relocation
The Little Rock Port soon will gain 55 acres to push the assembly of a 1,200-acre megasite closer to reality with the hopes of attracting a major industrial user.
The 55-acre property was tied up by a navigational beacon operated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The VOR (Very high frequency Omni-directional Range) cone, used by commercial flights and the C-130s at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, had occupied the location since 1946 before the Port of Little Rock was established
Gaining the VOR property led to the development of a new location on a 110-acre site near the Galloway exit on Interstate 40 in North Little Rock. That required nearly $5 million supplied by a combination of port, federal, state, county and city funds plus grants.
The new VOR Cone is mostly operational and is being tested by the FAA now, Day said.
“I don’t have a hard date, but I’ve been telling everyone mid- to late April,” he said. “I’m told it will take the FAA about 30 days to decommission the old facility, and then they will transfer the property to the port by late May or June. That means we should be able to start removing the structure after that.”
Toward that end, the Little Rock Port will receive a $2 million dollar state grant this spring for development work on the megasite. That money will be used to clear structures and vegetation from the property as well as relocate a drainage ditch.
Day hopes the Little Rock Port will receive additional grants to relocate utilities and reroute Frazier Pike to better position the megasite for development.
The port recently received a $720,000 grant from the Federal Railroad Administration to study the possibilities of reconfiguring railroad crossings on Fourche Dam Pike and Lindsey Road. The scenarios could entail construction of overpasses.
Port Purchases