Greenwood, Fort Smith building activity off to good start

Don’t tell the building sector in Sebastian County there is a national recession happening.

Greenwood had 11 building permits for a value of $2.971 million in February, a value up more than 369% over February 2008, and up 153% over January.

Don Oliver, with the Greenwood planning department, said the big jump is attributable to
Branson Harris Properties buying the former Gold Creek subdivision and building model homes there. The subdivision was renamed “The Oaks,” according to Oliver. The city issued permits in February valued at more than $1.9 million for new homes and duplexes,

Wal-Mart Stores is investing more than $900,000 to remodel its Greenwood store.

“This is up quite a bit,” Oliver said of the permit figures, understating the obvious.

February permits issued in Fort Smith had a total value of $11.97 million, up 99.9% over February 2008.

The big bump was from a $4 million building permit for construction of an 81-room Best Western hotel at 6500 Rogers Ave. Lisa and Tim Whitten of Russellville are building the hotel and also plan to operate it.

Also, the city issued a permit valued at $2 million for continued construction at the new Mars Petcare plant at Chaffee Crossing. The 260,000-square-foot, $80 million Mars plant should begin ramping up mid-2009 for test runs. About 200 are expected to work at the plant when it is fully operational.

The value of residential construction permitted in February was $2.6 million, down 18% from the value in February 2008.

(The City Wire has requested building permit info from Van Buren. We will update this post when that information is provided.)