Kyle Kellams: We’ll begin our Friday show with Michael Tilley from Talk Business and Politics. He’s on the phone with me from his office in Fort Smith.
Before we start talking about the news of the past week, I just want to point out, when I listened to our conversation last week, there was some sort of AI interference because it sounded like I predicted Arkansas would win over Notre Dame.
Michael Tilley: Yeah, that had to be. It had to be AI.
Kellams: Yeah, it couldn’t have been your fault.
Tilley: No, no, no, because nobody in his right mind would have said that on the air.
Kellams: Yeah. What I think I may have said was good luck with that or something.
Tilley: Yeah, I think that’s exactly what you said. Anyway.
Kellams: Let’s look at some of the news from last week. We mentioned earlier this year that the venerable Italiano’s, one of the most popular restaurants in Fort Smith, was closing. We talked about that then. Now we found out that much of it, the building and some of the assets, have been sold.
Tilley: Yes, they’ve been sold. I had a story ready to go that there was an auction set for Oct. 9, and that auction is still on. And then as I was—literally, I was 30 minutes, maybe an hour away from posting it—I saw on social media, Kevin Hickey, an attorney here in Fort Smith, announced that he had purchased it. Now, I don’t know what the purchase price is. The building was initially listed for sale at $399,000, but the building, as you said, housed the old Sparks Mansion. It was built in 1887. It was converted to a restaurant in 1970 by Tom Calderera Jr. and Mr. Jim Caddell, their partners. Mr. Calderera died in 2021. His son Joe took it over, and it closed in May of this year.
It’s kind of like the loss of a family member for a community. It’s been around so long. It was so popular. So it was good news when we learned that Kevin had purchased it. Now he’s not going to open it as a restaurant. It’s going to be, as he called it, more of a social house, available for weddings, wedding receptions, Christmas parties, bridal showers, those kinds of things. He also plans on building what he called an aesthetically appropriate bar for that building.
He wants to have wine pairings, bourbon tastings. Kevin is kind of known—he’s obviously been an attorney for 26 years—but he’s also known for these things called the Lawyers Table, where a group of folks will pay him to come to their house. He does this whole meal. He’s apparently a great cook himself. And they do these wine tastings and bourbon tastings, tequila tastings. I never understood tequila tasting. After one or two tastings you can’t taste anything, but I get it for the folks who are connoisseurs.
That’s what he’s going to do. He doesn’t yet know how much money he’s going to put in it. He wants to have it open early next year. But he said it really wasn’t a last-minute decision. He said he’d been thinking about it since it was announced it was going to close. And then when they pushed out the fact that there’s going to be an auction, he said, okay, I’ve got to buy it.
They’re still going ahead with the auction. There’s another building that the Calderera family owns. It’s right next to it. It used to be the restaurant, it used to be Vinnie’s Pie Shop, and it has a full kitchen also. And so it’s going to be sold, and a lot of the items in both of those structures—tables, chairs. So if you ever wanted an iconic table or chair from Italiano’s, the auction begins at 10 a.m. on Oct. 9. You can get all the information on that.
But look, the world may be crazy around us, but at least we now know Italiano’s will not sit vacant. It’ll be a great event venue in downtown Fort Smith. And I talked to Joe Calderera. They are very happy with this. They were concerned that—I don’t know what the right person or wrong person is—but they wanted the right person to buy it, put it back to some type of good use. And so they’re happy that Kevin has it, and they’re happy with his plan.
Kevin promised me in a few weeks or maybe a month or so, when he has some more details, we’ll have a follow-up story. He says the details are a little sketchy now, but we’ll get those out in a few more weeks.
Kellams: We have the most recent sales tax report for the city of Fort Smith, up 7%.
Tilley: Yeah. There have been three, four, maybe five or six months where it’s either been down or flat. But this is an interesting increase. Up 7%. Yeah, 7.04%. I’m sure city folks would want me to put in there that’s the city’s share of the Sebastian County tax. We watch that closely because that money goes into the city’s general fund.
Year-to-date, though, that tax is down. It’s raised $16.3 million, roughly, down just a little over 1.1%. That’s not that bad. Now, the 1-cent city sales tax for streets and the consent decree work—that was up 6.4%. Year-to-date, it’s down just under 1%. Again, those declines aren’t necessarily troublesome.
If you look back the last several years, city sales tax has really grown. Of course, a lot of that is inflation-related. So maybe there’s some normalization. Also, we’re seeing national reports that point to a pullback in spending. There’s lower consumer sentiment. And the Fort Smith metro has always been more of a blue-collar, maybe lower household income area than northwest Arkansas. So if you see some of that spending pull back in those groups, you’re more likely to see those pressures in the Fort Smith metro than you do in northwest Arkansas or Little Rock.
But we got a comment from Andy Richards, the city’s chief financial officer. He’s pretty optimistic. He said if this keeps going, we may be around 2% below the annual forecast. But that’s not a cause for alarm. They’ve got a few more months of revenue reports. We’ll see how they end up the year. But that 7% gain in August—you could almost hear the breath of relief from City Hall on that number.
Kellams: It’s a roller coaster when we talk about building permit activity in the Fort Smith metro, and also a recent report that shows down a significant amount compared with the same time in 2024. What do we glean from that?
Tilley: It was down. The September numbers for Fort Smith, Greenwood and Van Buren combined were $14.7 million. That was down almost 40% from September 2024. However, the numbers were up 21% compared to August.
The three cities hovered through the year at $231.4 million for the first nine months of the year. That’s up almost 20% compared to the same period in 2024. For the first nine months of the year, Fort Smith numbers are up 6.3%. They’re down 13.4% in Van Buren and up just a little over 15% in Greenwood.
I’m hearing several factors. These aren’t scientific. But some of the things we hear for the decline: the area is still kind of catching its breath. In 2020, the Fort Smith metro building permit total was $265 million. That rose to $520 million in 2023. That’s a 96% increase in just four years. So some of what we’re seeing is just catching our breath.
Other things: some construction folks are waiting on interest rate changes, mostly on the residential side. There’s concern nationwide about the economy, which may discourage franchises and larger companies from building in smaller markets like Fort Smith. There’s conjecture that the consent decree work the city is doing will begin to ramp up, and all the work at the foreign pilot training center at Ebbing Air Guard Base has pulled capacity out of the design, engineering and construction pipeline.
So some projects that may have come this year may be delayed to next year. I look at what’s going on this year as almost getting back to a normal trend that we were seeing before COVID. Before it jumped to that $520 million. We don’t have $200 million-plus at Mercy and $100 million-plus at Simmons Foods in Van Buren.
No cause for alarm. The numbers through the first three quarters of the year—if you’re up 20%, I think most any community would take that.
Kellams: I don’t remember if you were there when the Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center opened. It seems like it was about four years ago, but I’m shocked to tell you it was 17 years ago. And so much so that there’s a renovation taking place.
Tilley: Yeah, there is. Thankfully. They launched this “Reimagine the Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center” plan in April 2024. And then crickets. If you’re reporting on it, the silence was odd. I kept checking in, and finally learned in early September the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is moving forward.
It was initially about a $3 million plan. Now it’s looking more like $2 million. They hope to have it complete by March 2027. This facility is unusual. It was built on 170 acres as part of the Fort Chaffee turnover back to civilian authority. It has Wells Lake. Where I grew up, if you can throw a rock across it, it’s not a lake. It’s more of a big pond.
All that opened in 2005. I was out there recently. It’s dated. The exhibits are still very close to when my wife and I would take our two girls out there 15 years ago. If you’re a young family going for the first time, it’s not purely dated, but it’s time for an update.
Dr. Spencer Griffith, deputy director at Game and Fish, said they’re looking at it differently. They’re not just going to focus on the nature of the region. They want to include conversations about what Arkansas as a state is doing in conservation and habitat, the animals and flora and fauna in the state. Hopefully they’ll incorporate that.
I also hope they work on some of those outdoor updates they promised. My wife and I walked out there a few weeks ago. The walking trails definitely need work.
Kellams: Can’t wait till we talk again next Friday. I’m making no predictions right now for anything. Maybe I will next week.
Tilley: Okay. Well, that’s on you.
Kellams: Yes. You can read about everything we’ve talked about at Talk Business and Politics. Michael Tilley, until next Friday, thank you so much.
Tilley: You’re welcome, sir.
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