Scarletts Work Still Stellar As Celtic Nears Two Decades

Northwest Arkansas businessman Lee Scarlett has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in history, and grew up wanting to teach the subject on the college level.

It’s that bent for history that Scarlett, 45, takes the most pride in as the owner of Fayetteville-based Celtic Construction Inc., one of Northwest Arkansas’ oldest high-end homebuilders.

Scarlett said leaving behind a legacy of handiwork that will be deemed valuable for generations is what he enjoys most about his job.

“When you see a home that you [built] 18 years ago and it still looks good because you did it right the first time, that’s a big thing for me,” he said. “It’s kind of my legacy.”

Scarlett, a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2006, founded Celtic Construction in 1994.

His business — Scarlett and his wife, Scheri, are president and vice president, respectively — has evolved from a mixture of projects to an almost exclusive focus on one-of-a-kind custom homes in some of Northwest Arkansas’ most upscale locales.

Last year, Scarlett finished three homes and started on two more. Already in 2013, he has finished a residence in the Clear Creek neighborhood of Johnson, is nearing completion of a project in Rogers’ Pinnacle subdivision and has three starts under way, one of them for a Tyson Foods Inc. executive in east Fayetteville’s Bridgewater Estates.

“Last year was more of a normal year and this year is gearing up to be stellar,” he said. “So far, it’s probably the best year I am going to have in construction.”

With an entrepreneurial mindset — “I’m always looking to do something” — Scarlett stumbled into the home-building business while working as a full-time insurance executive.

One of his clients was a homebuilder in the area, and the two men partnered to build six spec homes as Scarlett learned the ropes.

Scarlett soon set out on his own, building high-end spec homes that were atypical — some as large as 4,500 SF.

“Everyone thought I was crazy, but I was selling them like hotcakes,” he recalled. “All of a sudden I wasn’t the insurance guy [building] houses anymore. I was the construction guy doing a little insurance on the side.”

Scarlett continued on the path, growing his construction business as Northwest Arkansas boomed with residential activity, while still booking about $1 million annually in premiums as co-owner of Mark Seifert & Associates Nationwide Insurance Agency in Fayetteville.

In 2008, however, Seifert died and Scarlett scaled back his insurance work, working out an agreement with the new owner to stay on as an associate agent.

“I decided not to purchase the agency because I didn’t want to be a full-time agent,” he said. “I still write a few policies for friends and some of my past clients.”

Scarlett said the economic slowdown was like a punch in the gut, particularly bothered by the wild lending practices to unproven builders.

“When I borrowed money, my part of the deal was I was going to use the money to finish building a house; and I lived up to my end of the deal,” he said. “The banks’ part of the deal was to appraise it and I trusted them to loan only to qualified builders. Then they flooded my market loaning money to hairstylists and airline pilots and J.B. Hunt executives to build homes that didn’t get finished. It was a little frustrating.”

Scarlett said he is most proud of the fact that he never filed bankruptcy during the difficult years, and has never had a lien filed against him.

‘I’ve never not had a house [under construction],” he explained. “Even in the slowest, worst economy, I still had at least a couple homes a year.”

Scarlett, who collects antique weaponry and rare bottles of Scotch, said watching his daughters — ages 14, 11 and 7 — grow up and keeping Celtic Construction pointed in the right direction are the extent of his future plans.

“My whole goal is building homes and that’s that,” he said.

Scarlett is a sponsor of several fundraising efforts locally, including the Friends of Washington Regional Hospice Summer Garden Party. He is also involved with the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter, Special Olympics Arkansas and Arkansas Children’s Hospital.