Kyle Kellams: Let's connect with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics to look back on the past six days or so. Michael, always a pleasure to chat with you.
Michael Tilley: Thanks for having me. I'm still surprised y'all let me do this, but I'm going to keep going as long as you let me.
Kellams: National Weather Service forecast could be described this weekend as great for fish — a lot of water expected. Something great for fishermen is opening in Fort Smith soon.
Tilley: Yes, Bass Pro Shops opens April 29. They announced back in February that they're going to bring their outpost — it's the smaller retail footprint. And I kind of feel like I'm not sure many of your listeners will get this, but I feel like Navin Johnson in the movie "The Jerk," when he got his name in the phone book. We're now somebody. We have a Bass Pro shop.
Plans to open a 70,000-square-foot store. So it's their smaller footprint, but it's still a large store. We never really got a full cost for what it cost to build. The city issued a $20 million building permit, so we know that it costs at least $20 million. It's expected to employ 100 — that's full and part time — so it'll be a good job generator.
The one thing that still blows my mind: it has a 19,000-gallon aquarium. I know this is not new — they all have these aquariums — but it's a 19,000-gallon aquarium, and Bass Pro says it's designed with the Ozarks cave environment. I've been in a few Ozarks caves and I never ran into an aquarium while I was in it. They'll have bass, catfish, all in it.
I was curious about 19,000 gallons. I went to the Google machine and it says the average residential swimming pool is 15,000 to 20,000 gallons, and the weight of that is almost 80 tons of water — and that's without the fish, just water. So I can't imagine the structural work that went into that.
Everybody's excited about it. I'm sure the getting in and out of that will be hell on Rogers Avenue for those few days for the opening week, but it's finally opening. It's billed as not only a retail draw, but somewhat of a tourism draw too.
Kellams: You kind of joked about something like this coming to a city and it meaning something, but you know, there have been ups and downs in retail and manufacturing for Fort Smith. It is a boost.
Tilley: Yes, it will be a boost. It's a good thing. I'm having fun with it, but I'm not intending to make light of it. It's a good thing.
Kellams: Moving along. Fort Smith Public School District is looking for a communications director again.
Tilley: Again. This will be — we've gone through three of them in three, maybe a little over three years, three and a half. Kimberly Mundell, who began with the district in October of last year, is a seasoned veteran. She spent 12 years as communications director for the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services and 12 years as the director of communications for the Arkansas Department of Education. When I talked to her last year, when she took the job, she said it was just a change of pace. She wanted to try something different and thought this was a great opportunity, but she lasted less than six months, around six months.
She succeeded Alan Marshall, who lasted a little over six months. And he succeeded Sherri Cooper, who held the job for less than or around 18 months. So it's a little troubling. We asked the district several questions about what happened. They would only confirm that she's no longer an employee. I asked if they had a process to hire another one and they would not respond.
Mundell provided a statement about why she left, and part of it — I'm quoting here — "the professionalism of the administration has not met the standard of my expectations." That's pretty tough. And again, we tried to get a response from the district. Nothing.
This is somewhat troubling for several reasons. One, obviously there's been a lot of turnover. Something's amiss. Is there a culture problem? What's going on? Also, the district needs to have a quality communications director. I wonder now, will they find it difficult to attract that quality talent? I'm concerned that a skilled comms person will think twice — what's going on here, do I really want to be in this environment? And then, what does the district do in the interim?
Hopefully the district will be able to address that, get someone in place, get quality talent. But I think at some point, the district may also owe the community an explanation, some assurance that there is not a culture problem there at the top that's causing these people to leave.
Kellams: We've known since last summer that there would likely be more space needed at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith than originally thought, and we're moving closer to that expansion now with the completion of an environmental review. What's next?
Tilley: There's this environmental review — it was called the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. It's just part of the process. The Air Force and the Department of Defense went through this when they were initially going to place the foreign military pilot training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith. The initial environmental statement was for 24 F-35s, and they decided they needed to add 12 more on the base. So they needed the supplemental impact statement.
What happens next is what the military folks call the ROD — a record of decision — has to come down. Hopefully that will happen soon. There are some who said this is a done deal, but you and I have been in this business long enough to know that nothing is certain, especially when the government is involved.
What does it mean? The Air Force says it will require another 271 personnel, and they estimate 325 dependents with that. That's a lot of folks in the area — 31% more than the initial estimate. They also say it could result in an additional 1.2 million square feet of facility construction or renovation. And it will increase the number of flight operations. The initial estimate was around 63,000 to 64,000 flight operations a year, and that will grow to just under 70,000. So it's good news for that base and for the Fort Smith metro.
There was an initial estimate that the base would cost around $850 million to $1.2 billion to build out. The Air Force is giving a rough estimate of $807 million, so it'll be interesting to see if that number gets updated with this expansion.
Kellams: Finally, we received the latest federal numbers for Fort Smith jobs and joblessness. What did these latest numbers tell us?
Tilley: They continue to show muted job growth in the Fort Smith metro. First of all, I should note this January report included some significant revisions from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They've changed their modeling and methodology. For example, the December numbers they reported for Fort Smith showed 105,200 estimated nonfarm jobs. After the revision, that tally dropped to 102,500. It's not a big deal, but the numbers have been revised, so if anyone's been keeping track, they're going to notice a change.
In January, the nonfarm numbers were 101,000, and that's down 500 jobs compared to January 2025. It's still below that regional peak employment of 108,700 in September 2007. The region has not recovered from the manufacturing sector losses.
The other concerning issue: there's almost a 32% increase in the number of unemployed between January 2025 and this January, according to the BLS numbers.
As to manufacturing — that's where I think the real hit comes from. The trade, transportation and utilities sector; leisure and hospitality sector; and education and health services sector — those jobs are growing in the area. But the manufacturing sector in January 2026 had an estimated 17,600 jobs. That was down 300 from January 2025. The sector posted record employment of 29,200 jobs in June 1999. So that's almost 12,000 fewer jobs. I continue to maintain that the Fort Smith metro is still struggling to pull itself out of that hole.
A lot of that is tied to when Whirlpool left, because Whirlpool had a lot of upstream and downstream manufacturers supplying it. That was just a big hit.
What we've seen in the last really 10 years, Kyle, is we'll have three or four months or maybe six months of some impressive growth and then it'll just plateau back out or even decline. It just doesn't seem to be able to catch any momentum.
Kellams: We've talked about a couple of things during this week's conversation — Ebbing, Bass Pro. Those might help a little bit.
Tilley: We hope. One of the things I hoped was when the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education created the osteopathic college and all the other services — they've been a big help. A lot of the gains we see in education and health services are tied to that. The metro would have more serious concerns if it weren't for that. But when you've lost 12,000 jobs over 25 years from the manufacturing sector, it's just going to take a while to pull out of that.
Kellams: You can read about all of this at talkbusiness.net. Michael Tilley, thank you so much for your time.
Tilley: You're welcome, sir.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
