CORRECTION: This editorial has been modified to reflect correct information about the vote of Bentonville’s Parks Advisory Board, which was erroneously reported in the original version.
One can hardly dispute that a dam is designed to slow down or stop water, but the one that forms Lake Bella Vista has been more effective in recent years as a barrier to a long-term solution for the future of Little Sugar Creek, in whatever form it will eventually take.
Local officials have spent years debating the dam’s future, but nobody’s really advocating for the dam itself. It’s what it creates that some people want to preserve. Lake Bella Vista has been part of its namesake community for a century.
Today, though, the decrepit dam is in failure, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and anyone who looks at it.
In recent days, it seemed the conflict over what to do with the dam might be headed toward resolution. In March, a task force created to evaluate three options for the lake and surrounding 135-acre park made its choice. One option was to rebuild the dam. A second was to remove the dam and let Little Sugar Creek become a free-flowing stream again. The third option, viewed by some as the middle ground, was to remove the dam, restore the creek and create a side-channel lake next to the creek at an estimated cost of $9.2 million.
That last option gained the task force’s favor, albeit in a split vote after an intense debate. Then, in June, Bentonville’s Parks Advisory Board voted 7-0 in favor of eliminating the dam and restoring the creek without the side-channel lake.
Last week, the Bentonville City Council was to take up the matter. It was beginning to look like the project’s future might finally be determined.
It wasn’t, in part due to an Aug. 7 letter from John Cooper III, president of Cooper Communities, parent company of Cooper Realty Investments.
What’s the point?
Despite language that makes it sound like there’s a legal impasse over Lake Bella Vista and its dam, we hope a compromise may still be possible.
It was that latter business that owned the Lake Bella Vista property, including the dam, until the ownership was transferred to a nonprofit “trailblazers” group that promotes and develops cycling and walking facilities in Northwest Arkansas. That group transferred ownership of the property to the city of Bentonville in 2005.
John Cooper III wrote Bentonville’s mayor and City Council last month with an assertion that the conveyance to the nonprofit group, and thus to the city, included a requirement that the owner “shall maintain the dam and in the event of damage or destruction replace or repair same.”
In the letter, Cooper explained that Cooper Communities told city officials Sept. 13, 2017, it would keep an “open mind” concerning the lake’s redevelopment, but described it as “highly unlikely” it would support an option to remove the dam.
Why? Many of Cooper Communities’ 36,000 Bella Vista home sites are in the vicinity of the lake. Residents, he said, expect the lake to be preserved.
The Cooper letter sounds threatening from a legal perspective: “Preservation of Lake Bella Vista was, in absolute fact, a material consideration and inducement to CCI’s (Cooper Communities) conveyance of the property to Trailblazers,” Cooper wrote. “CCI expects both that this provision will be honored by City and that Trailblazers will enforce the agreement, as City would not own this amenity if such dam maintenance provisions were not included in the agreement. The agreement was fully negotiated by the parties and binding upon all.”
Language like that would bring progress to a halt on virtually any project.
Naturally, when it comes to legal matters, not everyone agrees. The group Friends of Little Sugar Creek, which has advocated for dismantling the dam, argues the conveyance agreement is not legally binding on the city of Bentonville.
As with so many amenities in the region, the future of the dam has been linked to funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The foundation provided money for the study that led to the three potential solutions.
One thing the Walton Family Foundation consistently wants to avoid is getting in the middle of a community controversy, unless it can be an agent for moving all parties toward a solution. Clearly, the future of the dam and Lake Bella Vista remains controversial. The foundation has placed its support on hold, according to Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin.
It is unfortunate that the calm, steady progress toward a solution in recent months has now gotten into choppy waters again, pitting the desires of Bella Vista’s interests against those of the broader community of users. Did Bentonville allow itself, through the real estate documents, to get cornered into having no other option than repairing or replacing the dam? If that’s the way this plays out, respect to the Cooper Communities folks for shifting that foreseeable financial burden to someone else. That’s a pretty deft business move.
If that wasn’t the intention, hopefully all the parties can find their way back to the table for work toward a compromise. But as it stands, it’s hard to see a solution. Cooper Communities, if its legal analysis is right, holds all the power but not the responsibility to fund the improvements it wants to see done, despite what plenty of other people clearly want for the property.
Can this be worked out as long as there’s a legal disagreement about contracts of the past? Will the sides end up in court?
One could argue that won’t be worth a dam.
Commentary on 09/15/2018