Kellams: It is Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, the day before Halloween, just four days away from Election Day. This is Ozarks at Large. I’m Kyle Kellams. We start this last Friday of October with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Good Friday, sir.
Tilley: Good Friday. This Election Day thing I think I’ve heard about, that’s right around the corner.
Kellams: Right. That’s coming up.
Tilley: Yes.
Kellams: Kind of. First I’ve heard of it, but I’ll look into it. All right. Gosh, we’ve got so much to cover this week, including what seems like the latest in a nearly endless parade of unfortunate bits of news about Parrot Island, the water park. If there was ever a recipe for a local reality show, this would definitely be it.
Tilley: So, look. So we learned this Tuesday that they’re going to need at least another roughly $200,000 to fix it. And I know that’s not a lot to you radio people. You’ll make good coin, but just, I guess, jump back and give a little background.
You know, this water park, these five new slides, this expansion was initially just going to cost the city of Fort Smith $3.1 million. Sebastian County was going to kick in $2.1 million. Also, they share the park, share ownership. Sebastian County did not want to spend the money, so Fort Smith decided they would. So then Fort Smith tally went to $4.2 million. Then we learned in October of 2025 that it was going to cost more than $4.2 million. So now we’re up to about 6.2, just under $6.3 million. And now we need another $200,000. We may need more than that to cover some expenses that the previous management company incurred and didn’t pay. So, you know, it’s the classic “Stay tuned.”
But this company, CSM Waterworks, they were given a contract to install these slides. Unfortunately, the foundation, a lot of the things needed to get the slides in place, wasn’t ready. And so CSM had to leave. They had to pull their workforce out. Now they’re coming back and they’re saying that delay is going to cost at least a little over $193,000. And it’s going to require an authorization, another appropriation from the city board. And those funding votes have been split 4-3. And so who knows what will happen.
Director Jarred Rego, who has voted for these appropriations, was definitely not happy. He told City Administrator Jeff Dingman, “You do not come back to us with a request for more money until you’ve had conversations with the new operator.” The city and the county in the process of hiring a new operator. But said, “Don’t come back until you’ve talked to this new operator about how they can help fund some of this project.” So we’ll see.
You know, there’s been talk from some of the board members that if it’s going to cost more money, it’s time to sell the park, find a, yeah, you know, a feasible pathway out of ownership of that. Up until a few weeks ago, it looked like the Parrot Island thing was done and was over with. But here we go again.
Kellams: We do think it’ll open in the spring, though, right?
Tilley: Well, yes. If they get a new management company in and they’re able to, you know, do what they can to get it prepped, it should open in the spring. This new company has even said, “If you pay us this extra, we can get started immediately in January. And we should have it ready about a month before the Memorial Day opening.” You would think it would open this season and not just lay there without generating any revenue. But at this point, Kyle, I wouldn’t want to bet anything on Parrot Island.
Kellams: I understand. Fort Smith Public School District says a report shows they’ve lost about 800 students over the next two years, and they expect to lose more over the next decade.
Tilley: Yeah, the report said they could lose another 1,000 students. This was, and then we also confirmed it, was a Fort Smith School Board meeting Tuesday. The superintendent said that they’ve already eliminated 56 positions, with 16 of those being teachers. They call it their right-sizing effort, but they had a consultant come in, a guy named Hudson Huff, talked to him about some of their enrollment issues. They conducted an enrollment study. They showed enrollment this year is down about 6.1% or... Excuse me. Yeah, it’s down by 417 students just this year alone, down 3.1%. Mr. Huff reported that they could be down another almost 8% by the 2036-37 school year. So it’s just a trend of declines.
It was interesting. When he was going through his report, he talked about slower home sales, reduced population, people that still live in the metro area but may not live in Fort Smith. They just walked for several minutes around the subject of what was causing this enrollment decline without really getting into the private school growth. And I think we all know, through the change in Arkansas law that we’ve had, a lot of these private schools just pop up around the state. I think we’ve even had some reports of some less than, well, not all of them are legitimate, but there’s been a lot of private schools pop up.
So their report showed that there were 583 students, an increase of 583 students in the area that were in private schools. Now, if you’ve lost roughly 800 students and you can show that 583 students have increased in private enrollment, I think you start getting a picture, get the idea of what’s, yeah, what’s going on.
And so Huff, he talked about, it’s going to be difficult because there’s so many factors going on to predict where enrollment will go in the next 10 years. But the bottom line is the district, if you’ve had 12,000, 12,500, 13,000 students and you get down to 11,500 or 11,000, you’ve got a lot of fixed costs. You’ve got all the buildings, you’ve got the staff and faculty. How do you respond to that, you know, in a responsible manner? So that’s the challenge the district has before it.
Kellams: Home sales in the Fort Smith metro up just over 4% through August.
Tilley: Yeah, 4.1%. Now, this is up against a 2025 in which home sales were down eight, almost eight. Well, they were down 8.2%. It’s a picture of a rebound in the Fort Smith metro housing market. The number of homes sold through those first eight months was around 2,300. Again, that was up 4.1%. The combined value of the homes sold was a little over $580 million. That’s up almost 5%. So we’re seeing an increase in the average home sales price. In metro, it’s up about 1%.
And one of the things we are seeing is an uptick in the average days on market. So the average days on market was 98 through the first eight months. That’s up from 87 in the same period of 2025. We talked to Ashlee Milton. She’s a Realtor. She’s active in both the Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas metro market. She prepares the numbers for us. She talked about, too, that days on market issue, that the market has just become a little more difficult. Inflation, higher interest rates are just creating uncertainty and delay in the market for buyers and sellers.
For example, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage as of Oct. 15 was almost 7.5%. That’s up from 6.2% same time last year. That, you know, roughly 1.2%, that is going to impact the monthly payment considerably. And so Ashlee’s point was, what they’re seeing is that buyers are now dealing with the cost of borrowing and everything else that’s going up that competes for their dollars and their household budget. And sellers are having to deal with longer market times. And these buyers can be a little bit more selective because the market has shifted a little bit. There are more houses now in the market. In the last few years, that’s not been the case. So it’s just kind of interesting market. But the good news is it’s up and it’s rebounding from what was a pretty, not a good 2025.
Kellams: Also up, at least partially, this Butterfield Trail stagecoach monument in Fort Smith.
Tilley: Yeah. This is, you know, we’ve been reporting on this since February. I’ve been told it’ll be a life-size thing, 36-foot-long image of a stagecoach with horses and driver. And you’re told that, but until you see it.
Kellams: Right.
Tilley: Oh, gosh, this thing is huge, you know. So it’s very impressive. It’s not complete. They started installing it this Wednesday. It’s going to be a monument to the Butterfield stagecoach line. You know, it was the mail line from St. Louis and Chicago, partially, that ran over 3,500 miles. And Fort Smith was a hub. There was a line coming from St. Louis and one from Memphis. They both met in Fort Smith before heading west.
So the late Judge Jim Spears in February proposed this idea to the Central Business Improvement District. Unfortunately, he died in May before he could see it be a reality. But the CBID, they took it on. It’s been a project. They said that normally it would take two years. They’ve done it around six or seven months. Got all the donations. Donations will be valued between $200,000 and $250,000. But it’s all donated, and it’s in downtown Fort Smith, I should say just right around, just a few feet from where the original spot was for the stagecoach to stop.
So they hope to have the dedication ceremony prior to Thanksgiving, but they’re still waiting on some of the elements that will have to be installed to come in. They want to make sure it’s complete, with all the landscaping complete, before they have the dedication, but their target is before Thanksgiving.
Kellams: Finally, Van Buren, the latest Arkansas city to have some regulations about potential data centers.
Tilley: Yeah, it was, again, they met this week also. It’s been a busy week. Their council passed it 6-0. And we did learn that Mayor Joe Hurst of Van Buren said they had received some input from companies interested in data centers, but nothing was developed from those. But their new policy, it’s similar to what you see in other cities. They’re limiting where these can be built or requiring significant setback or separation from other zoning districts, especially those that permit residential development. Van Buren has a noise decibel ordinance, which was interesting, and that the facilities, whatever, they have to undergo a development plan review and they have to have information about their utility capacity.
So again, Arkansas law does not allow local governments to outright ban data centers. But a lot of communities, we saw in Fort Smith, we’ve seen it in some cities here in Northwest Arkansas, they’re making it much, much more difficult for those to be built.
One other thing, you know, we don’t get to report on Van Buren as much as we’d like to, but they’re moving forward on their almost $37 million community center. They hope to begin work on it next year. Have it ready, open by September 2029 is the plan. And, you know, I’ve been in this area more than 30 years, and folks in Van Buren have pushed for a modern community center and a park system for a long time. And they’ve made a lot of progress in recent years. And it’s good to see that more of that progress is going to happen. You can read about all of this at TalkBusiness.net and more.
Kellams: Finally, Michael, what is your favorite Halloween candy?
Tilley: Oh, anything with chocolate in it. Anything. Reese’s. I’m going to go with Reese’s.
Kellams: That’s a great answer. I think you may be 100% right on that one, Michael. I’m going to say candy corn and, you know, completely ensure that people will quit listening. Or circus...
Tilley: Who likes candy corn?
Kellams: Circus peanuts. You never wanted circus peanuts put in your bag. Michael, we’ll talk again in November. Thanks for your time.
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