It's not quite Thanksgiving yet, and so that means that we get to visit with Michael Tilley from Talk Business and Politics. He's in his office in Fort Smith.
Kellams: Michael, we will not talk a week from today, the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm going to wish you a happy holiday right now.
Tilley: Well, I appreciate it, and hope you have the same. I think Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because my wife is such a good cook, and I probably gain too many more pounds than I should.
Kellams: Well, then she's doing it right. You know what? I was going to try to have a segue between Thanksgiving and Miss Laura's. I'm just not going to do it. Let's just go into Miss Laura's, which once was a brothel. Now it is Miss Laura's museum. Why is it in the news again?
Tilley: Well, Miss Laura's, which really within the past year has converted to a museum. It was the offices for the Fort Smith A&P, but they moved their offices downtown on Garrison. So this two-story building is being converted to a museum. And the board of directors about a year ago signed an agreement, said they would support it for five years. But the city is in the middle of a little bit of a budget crisis. Their 2026 budget has a deficit of a little over $8 million. So they're working to try to cut that.
One of those cuts proposed was $260,000, which in the big scheme of things isn't going to really touch an $8 million deficit. But that was one of the cuts proposed, and it didn't take long for social media to push back. I think the plan before this Nov. 17 hearing was kind of dead in the water before it even got to the hearing.
Miss Laura's, for some of the folks that may not be familiar with it, it's on the National Register of Historic Places. According to Ashley Bacot, who's the head of the Fort Smith A&P, it's one of just nine former brothels on the National Register. And it closed, I think, in the early—like 1907, I think. It's not like 1700s or 1800s. There's some recent history with it.
But at the budget hearing, I think it became clear that it was not going to be axed. The funding was not going to be axed. City Director Christina Catsavis even said, look, we signed this agreement. Our intention was not to shut it down. It was to continue it. We need to continue it. There is a plan now for it to convert eventually into a nonprofit and be supported by grant money, private funding, and eventually get off the city budget. But I think the board members are willing for that to take place instead of just pull the rug out from under it. And Mayor George McGill even used the words “let's not pull the rug out from under it.” But we'll know for sure. The board is set to vote Dec. 2 on the budget, so we'll know for sure if that stays. But if I was betting, I would bet on the whorehouse. That's what I bet on.
Kellams: Okay. Let's talk about the Arkansas River. Another mainstay, of course, with the city of Fort Smith, tonnage being shipped down. And when we talk about numbers, sometimes if it's home sales or tourism tax, a little here, adjustment, it's down significantly.
Tilley: Yes, it is down a little over 35 percent for the first 10 months of the year. Or—excuse me—no, that's not true. It's down almost 19 percent through the first 10 months of the year. It is down 35 percent in October, the most recent month we have data for.
And it's down in all phases. The river traffic is—you have inbound shipments, you have outbound shipments, and then you have internal, from port to port on the river. And of course, the river stretches from essentially Tulsa all the way down through Arkansas, down toward where the Arkansas empties into the Mississippi.
The inbound shipments are down 6 percent, the outbound shipments are down 26 percent, and those internal shipments port to port are down 23 percent. I talked to Brian Day, he's executive director of the Port of Little Rock. He says there have been some high water levels. There has also been some maintenance on the river that's kept some of the locks closed. But he said that a lot of the federal—the tariffs, the Trump tariffs—have caused a lot of insecurity. He noted that shippers were hesitant to move fertilizers and fertilizer materials and construction materials until they knew more where the tariffs are, how they're going to shake out.
Marty Shell, he operates the Van Buren Port and Port of Fort Smith. He said the tonnage has been down, but it's not affected his port. He said they're staying pretty busy.
Part of why it's down is the two largest items that are shipped on the river: sand, gravel and rock. Those shipments are down 24 percent for the first 10 months. Chemical fertilizers for the ag industry are down almost 30 percent. So that's two of the big things hitting the market. Wheat and soybeans are also down. Wheat was down 18 percent. So I think that's also reflective of the hardships going on in the sector, primarily because of tariffs and higher input costs for the sector.
Kellams: We've talked often before about the Peak Innovation Center, which has young people in there learning skills, or better learning skills. It's part of the Fort Smith Public School District. You've talked about how much you like it. One of the things that nobody likes about it is it was prone to leaking. What do we know about this now?
Tilley: Yeah. And I do want to stress that I think this is one of the most amazing things that the Fort Smith School District does. It's essentially a regional workforce training center for 1,000 students. Around 20-something schools, I think, participate. The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith has a connection to it.
But it wasn't built correctly in terms of the hydrology. And what's been interesting about this is that the school district has never really been clear, never been up front, frankly have been just not honest, and continue to be a little vague in the process.
But we did learn recently they've conducted a few phases of work. They've completed a phase one and phase two program. This is all to address flooding, water flow around the building, off the roof. So they spent $866,000 on phase one and two, plan to spend about $679,000 on phase three.
But it's this phase four that will be the big project. Nicole Griffin, an engineering firm here in Fort Smith, estimates it could be between $2 million and $5 million to fix those drainage issues that cause leakage up into the floor. And that could get started—they're supposed to have a plan back within 90 days—that could get started next year.
The other interesting thing that came out of this recent school board meeting was that Superintendent Martin Mahan teased that the district is getting close to pursuing legal action to recover costs from some of the parties that built it originally. But this is going to be interesting, and part of me hopes that they do pursue legal action because maybe through the discovery process we can get some more honest answers from the district and some of the other players.
But just to remind your listeners, a lot of the firms that were involved in this—it was an existing building that had to be renovated, refitted—and a lot of firms involved in that tried to tell the school district that this wasn't going to work, that the plans they'd been given were not going to work. And one of those firms, Turnkey Construction, received a letter from the school district's attorney saying, “Just shut up and do it. Just shut up and do the plans. Just build it.” And it got so bad that Halff Associates, an engineering firm, and Turnkey, when the project was all done, sent letters to the school saying, look, we tried to raise concerns. We tried to make you aware of this. Now you're trying to throw us under the bus. We're not going to do business with you anymore on any project.
And then the school district hired this Envista forensics company allegedly to do an investigation. Except when the investigation was complete, we learned that Envista did not contact any of the companies associated with the work, which was odd, to say the least.
So I guess the two takeaways: we're making progress on getting the problem fixed. We'll see if we're making any progress on figuring out why we're in the position we are.
Kellams: Finally, you mentioned just a few minutes ago Michael Griffin Engineers and Surveyors. Another story that you can find on Talk Business right now is the gathering that took place to honor these civil engineers for their 70th anniversary in business.
Tilley: Yeah. It is. It's an amazing company, probably one of the most well-known civil engineering firms in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Josh Mitchell, he's the son and grandson of the previous owners, explained that whenever thousands—probably tens, if not a few hundred thousand—people in the Fort Smith metro turn their faucet on and get clean water, they don't realize that that's happening because of what the Mitchell firm did.
When I first moved to Fort Smith, it was Mitchell, Wagner, Coleman was the firm. Some of their projects—they're high profile. This is just a short list. Very short list of high profile projects: the Lake Fort Smith expansion in the nineties. And then they did survey work and initial route work for the 48-inch water transmission line from the lake to the city. They did Lake Fort Smith Dam and water treatment plant engineering in the sixties and seventies. Widening of major thoroughfares in Fort Smith, Old Greenwood Road, Phoenix Avenue. And they were involved in that master land-use planning for what would become the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority.
If you just want to guess that Mitchell had a role in it, you'd probably—odds are you'd be correct. And one reason I want to mention it: I would be remiss. Pat Mitchell was running the place when I was the young green reporter in Fort Smith. I was from a small town. I didn't know what a planning commission was. I didn't know what a planned zoning district was. That might as well have been German. But he took time he didn't have to explain to me how a planning commission worked, explained the labyrinth of rules and regulations it can take for projects to get approved, large and small.
So it's always nice—sometimes our headlines aren't good things. So sometimes it's nice to write a story about a company observing a 70th anniversary and honoring somebody like Pat Mitchell.
Kellams: All right. You can read about that and much more at TalkBusiness.net. Michael Tilley, once again, have a happy Thanksgiving. I'll talk to you in December.
Tilley: All right. Wow. Okay. You as well. Look forward to it.
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