FORT SMITH — The developer who planned to buy and renovate the Fianna Hills Country Club has dropped out of the project, leaving the owners to look for another buyer or possibly close the 40-year-old country club.
Lance Beaty of FSM Redevelopment Partners told City Administrator Ray Gosack in an email Tuesday morning that the partnership was no longer pursuing the estimated $20 million renovation of the club and that the related contract to purchase the club was terminated Monday.
Gosack announced the change to city directors Tuesday evening as they were poised to consider a rezoning request by Beaty that would have allowed the project to proceed. The city directors voted to table the rezoning request until May 6 at the request of club president and co-owner Jim Shields.
Gosack said in an email to city directors that tabling the request until May would give Shields and his business partner, David Mille, time to find another buyer.
In an email last Thursday to city directors, Shields said, “in the unfortunate event that this project does not receive the board’s approval, my partner, David Mille, and I will be left with no other option than to close the club and look for alternative usages for the property and facilities.”
Shields said Wednesday that two or more groups, at least one consisting of club members, have expressed interest in buying the club and that those offers would be pursued over the coming weeks.
He said he did not know of any plans to buy the club by a group of members represented by club member Linda Clay. Clay said Tuesday that her group of about 200 members expressed interest in buying the club but couldn’t meet with Shields and Mille because of the contract with Beaty’s FSM Redevelopment Partners.
Now that contract no longer exists, she said, her group will consider moving forward with plans to possibly purchase the country club.
Clay said she received anemail from Shields on Tuesday saying that the club would continue to operate normally and that a short business meeting would be held at 5:30 p.m. today to review the club’s operations.
Shields said he didn’t have “a bone to pick” with Beaty for dropping out of the project. He said Beaty’s plans were ambitious but he couldn’t get enough financial commitments to realize them.
City Director Keith Lau said Tuesday that Beaty told him he dropped out because property owners in the adjoining neighborhood created a “toxic environment” in which to do business.
Beaty said Wednesday that the level of “fabrication” about what the project included introduced so much speculation that FSM Redevelopment Partners had to walk away.
“The only way to win is not to play,” he said.
Before Tuesday’s meeting, Clay had submitted a petition asking the city directors to approve Beaty’s requested rezoning of the country club property from Residential-2 to Planned Zoning District. The petition, though, asked that the city directors omit as permitted uses in the districtprofessional offices, medical concierge facilities, doctor offices and clinics, and residential detached and family group homes.
Clay said she and others feared there would be nothing to stop such offices and homes from being built on the property in the future.
“If Fianna Hills becomes an office park, the property values of each of our homes are at risk,” Clay wrote in a cover letter with the petition.
According to the city’s Planning Department, the Fianna Hills project called for renovating the country club and adding nearly 60,000 square feet of space to the 23,600-squarefoot club, mostly by building 51 member suites. The project also would include about $2 million of work to the 18-hole golf course.
Even though FSM Redevelopment Partners’ project consisted of expanding and renovating the country club, professional offices and other facilities permitted under the proposed rezoning could be built on the property without any further approval by the city, Director of Development Services Wally Bailey wrote in a memorandum to city directors.-
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/03/2014