SREG Builds Momentum (OPINION)

Fayetteville businessman Seth Mims moved here from Dallas when he was in his early 20s with some advice from his father — pick a product to sell, and sell it.

Mims, you see, speaks fluent Spanish. Because of the growing Hispanic population in this area of the state in 1994, Mims’ father — who had a vacation home in Northwest Arkansas — saw an opening here for his son.

Mims chose real estate, and went to work for industry giant Jim Lindsey, helping Spanish-speaking residents buy their first homes.

Real estate has turned out to be a smart choice for Mims. He began his own company in 1998, branched out into property management and development in 2011, and earlier this year, executed the biggest deal of his career, the $49 million sale of the $28.5 million Sterling Frisco in Fayetteville.

The student-housing development was created and sold through a partnership of Sterling University Housing Group of Houston, Texas, a subsidiary of Dinerstein Cos., which has developed several downtown Fayetteville multifamily projects, led by Mims (founder and president) and CEO Jeremy Hudson.

The 219-unit development situated just blocks from the University of Arkansas had an occupancy rate of just 85 percent when it sold to Pennsylvania-based GMH Capital Partners. That shouldn’t equate to a $49 million sale — but it did.

That speaks volumes about the strength of the Fayetteville market and indicates that national investors have a high interest in placing their money here in a big way.

For SREG, the success of Frisco should give the company momentum as it heads toward its next multimillion-dollar project in Fayetteville: a 308-unit, mixed-use trailside development, accompanied by 17,000 SF of retail space, at the southwest corner of Joyce and Steele boulevards, across from Razorback Cinema and Academy Sports.

SREG has the 14-acre site, owned by a group of three sisters, under contract, and construction should begin this summer.

The updated renderings I’ve seen show a development that will be unique to Northwest Arkansas, something that may even be looked upon years from now as a paradigm shift in the approach to walkable, multifamily developments.

And if anyone can sell this kind of vision, it’s Mims, who is beginning to lead SREG onto the list of the many corporate success stories to be found in Northwest Arkansas.