Fort Smith city staff to pursue bakery building purchase

The Fort Smith Board of Directors on Tuesday (Feb. 3) gave City Administrator Dennis Kelly the green light to further investigate the purchase of Flowers Food Bakery on 6th Street in downtown Fort Smith.

Flowers Foods announced in late December it was closing its Fort Smith bakery operation. The move resulted in 82 jobs lost.

With the property next to the Fort Smith Convention Center, Mayor Ray Baker and other directors suggested the city buy the little more than 1-acre piece and use for convention center parking. The property has a tax appraisal value of $981,000.

Kelly said the property and structures can be purchased for less than $1 million. However, he said there is “a lot of due diligence” the city needs to do — review demolition costs, renovation costs, asbestos and other environmental remediation, etc. — before making a decision. He said the city needs to send a “good faith” letter to Flowers Foods so they will not list the property with a commercial Realtor.

The company is interested in a quick sale of the property, Kelly said. A memo in the board of directors’ meeting packet outlined a phone conversation between Kelly and Robert Benton, an exec with Flowers Foods, in which Benton said he would relay the city’s interest to Flowers officers gathered Wednesday (Feb. 4) at an executive meeting.

City Director Bill Maddox was the only director to oppose the idea of buying the property, saying the city would likely spend too much money just to develop a small parking lot.