City reacts to counteroffer

n The school district offered an additional $60,000 to purchase a portion of the property where the rodeo grounds are located.

By Mike Capshaw

Staff Writer n [email protected]

Phillip Patterson said the city is "very, very appreciative" of the Siloam Springs School District's counteroffer to purchase property where the rodeo grounds are located.

However, it won't affect the city's latest stance on relocating the rodeo, according to the Siloam Springs city administrator.

"It is greatly appreciated; it's a generous offer," Patterson said. "It helps, in my opinion, but we still have a large gap that we need to see if we can find a way to close."

That "gap" is a $600,000 shortfall on the nearly $1.4 million estimate it will take to relocate the rodeo grounds from its current home on Cheri Whitlock Drive to property south of Siloam Springs on Arkansas Highway 59. The city budgeted $800,000 for the project.

The city and school district began talks to sell the current rodeo grounds last October. It's a 16-acre property and when appraisals for that property came in at about $81,000 per acre, the school asked only to purchase the back 11 acres with intentions of expanding its baseball/softball facilities. They settled on a price of $35,000 per acre, which fell between separate appraisals by the city and the school, and put the total price just under $380,000.

The school's counteroffer is for $35,000 per acre, which is $440,000 total for the back 11 acres. That would leave the city with another five acres of Cheri Whitlock Drive frontage to sell. Because that can be used for commercial property, the city's appraisers believe it can fetch about $80,000 per acre, or $400,000 total.

Selling both pieces of property would give the city the $800,000 it budgeted to move the rodeo grounds. However, more dirt work than expected would be required at the new site and the city also isn't able to move lights from the Glenn W. Black Stadium, which it had planned to do. The added cost of $100,000 for the city to do the lighting brings the total cost of the project to nearly $1.4 million.

Because of the higher cost to rebuild the rodeo grounds, the city's board of directors asked Patterson to "go back to the school" to see if it could help offset costs by increasing its first offer. Patterson met with Siloam Springs superintendent Ken Ramey on Dec. 31 to discuss it.

"I didn't really believe they would come back anytime soon," Patterson said. "So, I reported back to the board on Feb. 20 that I hadn't heard back and that I could not recommend relocating the rodeo grounds. I told the board that I believed we needed to step back, do research on a national scale and see if we could maybe find some grant money to help with this project."

Patterson said he heard back from the school on March 9 about it's counteroffer, but he doesn't think it'll be enough of a difference to change his directive from the board to continue exploring more financing options over the next year.

"The direction I got from the board on the 20th is take a step back and spend some time trying to research how to fill that gap," Patterson said. "This helps, but it's still a large gap that we're chasing. It's still a large number.

"I haven't talked to Ken Ramey since I received it, so I don't know if we let this time run out, if say six months from now, that they will be willing to do the same thing."

Patterson said he has been encouraged by his meetings with the school district and believes they both have the same goal in mind.

"I can't say enough positive things about the school and Ken Ramey," Patterson said. "They are clearly wanting to work with us to make this happen. They know the growth pattern of the city is heading that way and and know there are a lot of positive aspects for us and for them with making this happen.

"But the large number we are still chasing (to relocate the rodeo grounds). We're still out $540,000 and that's sunk cost that we weren't expecting."

General News on 03/18/2018