FCRA leaders ready to negotiate on dissolution, ‘have everybody in the room’

Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories about the future of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority. The second story is scheduled to post Thursday afternoon (April 4).

The Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority (FCRA) executive director is willing and ready to sit down with four beneficiaries of the trust to start working on a plan for dissolution. The FCRA board chairman also is ready for key officials to begin working on a transition plan.

Within the last week, the board of directors for Barling and Fort Smith passed resolutions recommending the dissolution of FCRA, termination of indenture of trust, establish a winding up date and establish procedures for the distribution of trust funds and trust property to the beneficiaries. According to Jerry Canfield, attorney for the City of Fort Smith, termination of the trust can only happen if the trustees of the FCRA vote to do so.

On Tuesday (April 2), FCRA Executive Director and CEO Daniel Mann and Dean Gibson, chairman of the FCRA Board of Trustees, sat down with Talk Business & Politics to discuss the trust, dissolution and perceived conflicts with the beneficiaries.

The FCRA was formed in 1997 to oversee redevelopment of 6,000 acres of land released by the U.S. Army from Fort Chaffee as part of a Base Realignment and Closure downsizing. It has four beneficiaries – Sebastian County and the cities of Barling, Fort Smith and Greenwood.

Barling was the first of the beneficiaries to pass a resolution regarding the dissolution of the trust. Fort Smith followed with a similar resolution Tuesday (April 2) and Sebastian County Judge Steve Hotz included a draft of a similar resolution in the Sebastian County Quorum Court’s agenda package for the March 29 meeting in order to give members a chance to review the resolution for future discussion. The Greenwood City Council was presented with a similar resolution Monday night (April 1) for review only.

“The City of Barling (approved a resolution), and I assume the City of Fort Smith will approve the resolution, and they will want that presented to the trustees, as I’m sure they will. So we will allow the trustees to have some input and feedback,” Mann said regarding the resolution for dissolution. “I would imagine that as a body, they will instruct me to start immediately on those types of discussions.”

Mann said he thinks the best thing that could happen is for him to sit down with Barling and Fort Smith city administrators, the mayor of Greenwood and the Sebastian County judge to discuss what needs to be done with FCRA.

“We just want to provide fair and accurate information, and that is not what’s being received,” Mann said.

He said he talked with a couple of the FCRA trustees about meeting with beneficiaries.

“Right now, discussions are on an individualized basis. It’s best to have everybody in the room so they are all hearing the same thing,” Mann said. “I’ve proposed to some of the trustees that that’s the direction that we need to go.”

He said he works for the board, so would not be doing anything without their direction. But he believes that following the April 18 FCRA board meeting, he will be given direction to try to set up a meeting with the beneficiaries.

“I think the resolutions are an attempt to get us all around the table,” Mann said. “This is me. I am not speaking on behalf of the board because I have not gotten any direction from the board. I think getting the individuals to look at what needs to be done for wind up at the same time we are going down the path of development as we have been and not set a time clock to that (is what we need to do). I personally wouldn’t want to see us make decisions that would impact the overall benefit of Chaffee Crossing just because there is a timeline that has been established.”

Mann said FCRA has a broad timeline of dissolution of between three and 10 years. The amount of marketable land still available at Chaffee Crossing is quoted between 250 to 960 acres, depending on the entity reporting. Mann said there about 960 acres left they hope to sell, but he is working on a more accurate number because he understands some of that is not “property for development.”

“But you have to start working towards that (dissolution),” Mann said. “Ideally, we need to start working on the path towards dissolution, just not to the negative benefit of the project but to the benefit of all parties involved.”

Gibson said he wouldn’t mind being in the meetings with the beneficiaries, but believes it would be best to leave those discussions to Mann and administrators.

“What we think ought to happen is the administrators from each beneficiary ought to come. We send Daniel. He’s our man. He’s who we pay to do that job. Let them get in a room together,” Gibson said.

By keeping the discussions between the Barling and Fort Smith city administrators, the Greenwood mayor, the Sebastian County judge and Mann, Gibson says it keeps personal opinions and conflicts out of the mix.

“I think there is some individual input into this that is not altogether a city problem or city business but it gets to be personal. If we take the administrators and we put them in the room together and we let them work, then we get away from me having some personal conflict that I would like to see injected or someone else doing the same. And I think that is what we are seeing. We are seeing personal stuff,” Gibson said.