Legion to leave home since '60s in downtown LR

Citing high costs, vets group to sell building, head west

M.M. Eberts Post 1, the oldest American Legion post in the state, has put its building at 315 E. Capitol Ave. in Little Rock up for sale. Post officials said the veterans organization is looking to relocate to west Little Rock.

M.M. Eberts Post 1, the oldest American Legion post in the state, has put its building at 315 E. Capitol Ave. in Little Rock up for sale. Post officials said the veterans organization is looking to relocate to west Little Rock.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The state's oldest American Legion post, a fixture in downtown Little Rock since the mid-1960s, is relocating in an effort to cut expenses and avoid closing its doors permanently.

M.M. Eberts Post 1, the first of about 400 American Legion posts in Arkansas, was established almost 100 years ago, just after the national Legion was chartered and incorporated by Congress as an organization devoted to aiding veterans and bettering communities. The building at 315 E. Capitol Ave. has been home to the post, its Saturday night dances and weekly bingo games for 50 years.

A list of reasons -- including a high price tag for property taxes, commercial property insurance and utility bills for the aging structure -- has led the post's officials to put the building up for sale. Once the property is sold, the post will move into a temporary location while constructing a new facility elsewhere in Little Rock.

"We want to save our club, that's our whole goal," said Bob Criswell, the post's adjutant. "We may have had to close our doors if we stayed there."

The 8,000-square-foot building, which is owned outright by the American Legion, sits on about 29,000 square feet of land in the historic Quapaw Quarter and directly across from the Central Arkansas Transit Authority's River Cities Travel Center. Moses Tucker Real Estate, which is brokering the sale, listed the property at $950,000.

Several people have toured the property since it went on the market last month, said John Martin, executive broker at Moses Tucker.

"Interest has been pretty good," Martin said. "It's an interesting property; it's well-positioned along Capitol Avenue, and it has significant parking that goes along with it."

Criswell said post officials hope to spend no more than $500,000 to construct the new building, which will be about 6,000 square feet. What's left from the sale will go into the post's reserve fund, he said.

The post's yearly income, which is made up of dues collected from its 1,400 members in addition to other revenue, does not cover annual operating expenses at its current location, according to the post's most recent publicly available Internal Revenue Service Form 990, a document that all nonprofit organizations must file annually.

A $500,000 reserve fund was created several years ago after the post sold some additional property, but the post has dipped into that money every year in order to cover its expenses. In 2012, the fund had fallen to about $300,000, and it has decreased even more in the past two years, Criswell said.

The post ran a $113,000 operating deficit in 2011, according to its 990 form. The document showed that the post received more than $175,000 in revenue in 2011, but had about $288,000 in expenses. In 2010, the post had a deficit of more than $76,000, and in 2009, it ran a deficit of $40,000.

"Our expenses have far exceeded our income," Criswell said.

Part of the post's expenses include hiring a security guard to monitor the parking lot during night events, something that Criswell hopes will no longer be necessary at its new location.

When the post was first established on Capitol Avenue in the 1960s, it was the "nice part of town," Criswell said.

"It's evolved into an area that is very undesirable."

Doyle Batey, adjutant for the state's American Legion Department, said there has been an increase in foot traffic along the alleyway next to the building, with people going back and forth between the bus station and Downtown Deli and Grocery, located behind the Legion post at 314 E. Sixth St.

"There's all kinds of folks wandering around in the alleys," Batey said. "They're looking for a much better location, and I think that's really going to help them out."

The post will settle into a temporary home before seriously searching for land that will house its permanent location, Criswell said. However, post officials do have an idea of where they want their new building to be. They would like to relocate to west Little Rock, somewhere off Cantrell Road or Chenal Parkway, Criswell said. Their goal is to be established in the permanent facility within one year from the old building's sale.

As for the old property, Sharon Priest, executive director of the Little Rock Downtown Partnership, said she hopes whoever buys it will introduce something good to downtown.

"We hate to see them go," Priest said. "But hopefully they'll find somebody who will buy the building and do something good with it."

Metro on 07/10/2014