Greenland Fortunes Ripening on the Vine

Greenland doesn’t have a bank branch or a grocery store. The only restaurants are Sonic and McDonald’s. With the exception of a few houses, the only thing that’s been built in Greenland since the Great Recession is a Dollar General store.

Unlike the rest of Northwest Arkansas, when change comes to Greenland, it comes slowly. One of the local landmarks, after all, is an old Mini Mart on Main Street. And one of Greenland’s biggest beautification projects of the last decade was when Bill Culver cashed out, and cleaned out, his junkyard, for years an eyesore on the southern edge of town.

Greenland, population 1,354, still has to deal with the perception that its schools are no good. In 2008, the state Board of Education took control of the Greenland district due to fiscal distress.

State control was lifted in 2010 and Greenland has been on its own, and presumably healthy, since that time, but doubts persist. In addition to lingering questions regarding the schools, Greenland also deals with the perception that its municipal government is argumentative and anti-business.

Regardless of the odds that seem stacked against it, it looks as if fortune is at last ready to shine on Greenland. A 160-acre tract of land just south of Wilson Street is now under contract with an unidentified buyer. The Razorback Regional Greenway, if aldermen approve it, is coming through town. And just a few miles outside the city limits, the Fayetteville Regional Park on Cato Springs Road is under construction at the foot of Mount Kessler.

Does all this add up to a boon for Greenland? Mayor Bill Groom, in office since 2011, surely thinks so.

“We’re not going to remain Mayberry forever,” he said.

 

Rooftops and Trails

Groom said he doesn’t know who bid on the 160-acre hilltop tract at Napier and Campbell roads, but if the past is any indication, the buyer will likely want to build a subdivision there.

In the mid-2000s, a 550-home development called Greenland Hills was planned for the property, but the proposed subdivision was unpopular because developer John Nock wanted to use a sceptic system, not city sewer, Groom said. The wastewater issue became moot, however, because the recession hit, Nock and his team floundered, and Greenland Hills wound up as a foreclosure with Metropolitan National Bank, now Simmons First National Bank. That was in 2009, and the land has been used for cattle grazing ever since.

Groom said a big subdivision is what the town needs to attract the basics — a bank branch, a grocery store and a locally owned restaurant — to make Greenland attractive. 

“The more rooftops you get, it begets more rooftops,” he said. “We need to get the seed planted, and then it could take off.”

In regard to the Razorback Regional Greenway, that process is still unfolding. The Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission has gone to Greenland on multiple occasions to present plans for the trail, which would link Greenland to its neighbors, West Fork and Fayetteville, and by so doing, to all of Northwest Arkansas. But residents, particularly those who are generations deep in Greenland, aren’t convinced that a trail is needed. Their voice of dissent is loud.

“The pendulum is starting to swing in that direction [of approving the trail], but it began with a ‘hell no’ and a double ‘hell no,’” Groom said. “I fully support the trail. It’s part of the overall strategy to market the city.”

Meanwhile, infrastructure is being installed at the Fayetteville Regional Park, which at the full, $28-million build-out will be the largest park in the city with everything from baseball and softball diamonds to an amphitheater. The park is less than three miles from the Greenland city limits, making the Fayetteville park a de facto Greenland park.

With recreational amenities and perhaps even a subdivision on the way, there are new opportunities to sell Greenland to people who continue to move to Northwest Arkansas in droves.

“It’s a blank slate right now,” Groom explained.

 

Save the Schools

Even before the recession, there were troubling signs in Greenland. According to published reports, the school district had three years of declining fund balances and was using short-term loans to remain afloat. The projected deficit by the end of fiscal 2009 was expected to be as much as $427,000.

In July 2008, the state Board of Education sacked the Greenland school board, of which Groom was the chairman, and took control of the district rather than carving it up and annexing it into neighboring districts.

In October 2010, after serious belt-tightening and passage of a sales tax, Greenland returned to local control with a new superintendent, a budget surplus and high hopes for the future. Greenland, in defiance of expectations, had rallied to save its schools.

“It was a serious black eye, but it’s in the rearview mirror now,” Groom said.

In Groom’s opinion, what didn’t kill Greenland made it stronger.

“Everybody pulled together, and that unity is still there,” he said.

According to the 2014 federal report card mandated by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the overall district “Needs Improvement,” based in large part on student performance in literacy and mathematics. Considered a low-income district due to its rate for free and reduced-price lunches, Greenland has made important strides in the last few years, school superintendent Larry Ben said. The Office of Educational Policy at the University of Arkansas recently recognized the middle school for improvement in algebra, and the high school was recognized for achievement in geometry.

Ben also said the district continues to focus on curriculum and instruction, and that the district is working with parents to create a better learning environment for fifth- and sixth-graders.

In regard to what got Greenland into trouble back in 2008 — fiscal insolvency — the news is good. Greenland has a projected 2014-2015 fund balance of $1.6 million. And in terms of school spirit, Greenland is riding high. The senior high girls’ basketball team won back-to-back state titles in 2012 and 2013, and as of Feb. 5, they were 10-0 in conference play and expected to make yet another push for a championship.

While the Greenland school district is still a work in progress, it’s in better shape than it was back in 2008, and that’s an easy truth to tell.

“It’s a selling point instead of a drawback,” Groom said.

 

Gray Area

Before Groom became mayor, the post was held by physicist and engineer John Gray. It was during his 2007-2010 tenure that Greenland got its reputation as a difficult place to do business. Gray, a Green Party candidate who ran against Blanche Lincoln and John Boozman in the 2010 U.S. Senate race, is proud of that.

“A lot of people think I’m anti-business,” he said. “I’m not anti-business. I’m anti-scum-business.”

He opposed Greenland Hills, the NWA Auto Auction, Culver’s Truck Sales, and, above all, Love’s Travel Stop. The national truck-stop chain wanted to build at the southeast corner of the intersection of Interstate 49 and Wilson Street. The problem was, on the northwest corner of the intersection was Tobo’s, a truck stop owned by local businessman Todd Bohannon.

According to a 2008 lawsuit filed in Washington County Circuit Court by Greenland Properties LLC, the realty group trying to sell the Interstate 49 property to Love’s, Gray and the aldermen approved and continued to reauthorize a moratorium on all commercial construction in the city.

According to the suit, the moratorium was used to quash the Love’s deal and protect Tobo’s from competition. In its suit, Greenland Properties accused Gray and the City Council of, among other things, civil conspiracy. The suit was eventually dismissed in September 2008, and Love’s never built a truck stop in Greenland.

Gray concedes his stance against key development opportunities during his mayoralty made plenty of people angry. And he paid for it at the ballot box. In last year’s mayor’s race, Groom defeated him by a margin of 66.2 percent to 33.8. Looking back at his years as mayor, he says he stands by his record. When he began his first term, Gray said, Greenland was “a dumping ground for anything Fayetteville didn’t want.” By the time he left office, that was no longer the case, he said.

While Gray said it’s easy to blame him for economic stagnation, he also said it’s been four years since he’s been in office. Now it’s time for Groom to address the obvious: Growth should be heading south from Fayetteville, but it isn’t.

“Why is that?” Gray said.

 

Real Estate Listings

While attending the Arkansas Municipal League’s winter conference in Little Rock, Fayetteville mayor Lioneld Jordan introduced Groom to Drew Williams, a community development manager for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

Williams followed up with a site visit to Greenland and took a tour with Groom. Before leaving, Williams gave Groom a packet outlining step one in the process of literally putting a city on the map of economic development.

On the AEDC website under “sites” is a county-by-county listing of commercial properties that are at least 10,000 SF or at least 10 acres. “Sites,” according to Williams, is oftentimes visited by investors from out of state. Appearance on the list is also voluntary, which means if Greenland wants properties listed there, Greenland will have to do the leg work. 

A number of commercial real estate firms have plenty of listings in Greenland. If Greenland has a big advantage in the real estate game, it’s that its average sold price per acre, according to the Multiple Listing Service, is among the most affordable in the entire region.

Williams, who covers Northwest Arkansas, said to his knowledge, the economic development commission and the city of Greenland have never had contact — until now.

If Greenland is serious about stepping up and competing for an industry that could transform the town’s tax base, Williams said, then Greenland needs to ask itself what it wants to be and what it wants to do. And that process begins with Groom.

“That’s up to the mayor,” Williams said. “I’m up for anything the mayor wants to pursue. It’s in the mayor’s court.”