Little Rock is still on the mend after the March 31, 2023, tornado that ripped through the heart of the city. The tornado, classified by the National Weather Service as an EF-3 with 165-mile winds, hit several residential areas along with many retail and entertainment venues.
Breckenridge Village, which had been well on its way to being rebirthed, took quite a hit, setting its progress toward recapturing its former glory as west Little Rock’s prime dining and entertainment destination.
“I was in my office in downtown Little Rock, looking at the storm coming across the market,” said Hank Kelley, CEO of Kelley Commercial Properties. “The sudden nature of it and the impact that it had was very sobering to us.”
Kelley and his firm manage the Breckenridge property and have played a large role in redeveloping the area.
“After, we knew we had damage. We tried to get from our offices to the properties that had been damaged,” Kelley said. “We were scrambling to try to get restoration people in place as soon as possible.”
As the city began to survey the damages, KCP began crafting a plan of action to get their properties back up and running.
“The first thing you have to do is remove the debris and make sure no one’s injured. So the first priority is human life,” Kelley said.
Significant exterior damage, broken water lines, lost roofs and walls were all pressing problems to solve, but, luckily, the structural integrity of KCP’s buildings remained sound.
The first step of the Breckenridge bounce back was getting the buildings dry — a process that takes more than a day or two due to the roofing repair and insurance claims.
“We had to put semi-repairs in place that would last long enough for us to get permanent new roofing put in place,” Kelley said. “We had to improvise with air conditioning units that were blown off the roof and disconnected.”
While all of the clean-up and rebuilding efforts began at the forefront, filing insurance claims was an important behind-the-scenes task. While some were picking up debris and covering roofs and walls with tarps to begin the drying process, others were confirming coverage guidelines and meeting with claims adjusters.
From there, restoring power and working with tenants to reevaluate plans for their restaurants or businesses were KCP’s focus.
We’ve been here before
Arkansas has seen its fair share of weather-related damage. In 2020, Jonesboro suffered a similar instance as a tornado caused significant damage to many of the town’s retail staples.
For Joshua Brown, principal broker of Haag Brown Commercial, bouncing back was a little different.
A lot of the damage dealt by Jonesboro’s tornado landed on the Mall at Turtle Creek and surrounding national retail locations, such as Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond. So one of Brown’s first priorities was helping these retailers find their way back to the city despite the wreckage.
“Some of the companies that were under lease agreements that got taken out by the tornado, in our example, it was BestBuy and Barnes and Noble… some of those regional retailers that are really important to have in your community,” Brown said. “Once their store got blown down, it’s cost prohibitive to build it back and until there’s an existing building at a rental rate cheap enough, you can’t get them back open in your community. That was one of the biggest downsides for us.”
Zac Qualls, as a property manager for Haag Brown, worked closely with tenants to begin the redevelopment efforts.
“From a landlord perspective and a property owner perspective for us, when that tornado hit, our first priority was to work with the tenants and get them back open as soon as we could in their existing real estate or make arrangements for them to get opened back up elsewhere temporarily until we could get their original locations back up and running,” Qualls said.
With clauses in the tenants’ leases allowing them to terminate their leases if displaced or if a building sustained damage, the Haag Brown team was under a tightening timeline of finishing repairs and getting buildings up and running again.
Disaster Preparedness
Ultimately, the Jonesboro and Little Rock tornadoes heightened both Haag Brown’s and KCP’s calls for insurance policies.
“Make sure you’re checking your insurance policies and make sure that you’ve got loss of rental income when these natural disasters hit,” Qualls said. “If the store is destroyed and they can’t open up and sell and pay rent, then the insurance company has the ability to cover their rent for a period of time.”
A good insurance policy isn’t something to take for granted, according to Kelley.
“Spend more time understanding it when you’re not in a crisis. It’s not what people want to do — they don’t want to spend their free time studying insurance policies, but it’s an important thing,” he said. “Whether you’re talking about your homeowners policy or a 40-story office building, really understand the deductibles, really understand the company that’s insuring you so that you’re prepared in the event of an incident.”
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