Permit is for building
Crossings-mall hotel
A building permit has been issued to Dave Grundfest Co. to build a $5.5 million Hilton Home2 Suites at Shackleford Crossings mall in Little Rock.
The hotel is to be built for Shackleford Crossings Investments LLC.
Rajesh Mehta, managing partner of the investment group, said in May 2013 that "we're definitely going to build a [hotel] there at Shackleford Crossings. But we haven't locked down the franchise yet."
Efforts to contact Mehta and Dave Grundfest, the construction company owner and project manager for the hotel, on Thursday were unsuccessful.
The permit states that the hotel will be built at 2710 Shackleford Road, which is near the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
The International Franchising Association describes the Home2 Suites as a "midtier extended-stay concept."
The hotel will have five floors and 93 guest rooms and should be completed in about a year, said John Rogers of B&F Engineering of Hot Springs, who is the engineer on the project.
-- Jack Weatherly
Wal-Mart must yield
Mexico-linked files
The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld a lower-court ruling requiring Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to give documents relating to the company's internal Mexico bribery investigation to a shareholder.
The attorney for the shareholder, the Indiana Electrical Workers Pension Trust Fund IBEW, said his client is pleased with the decision.
Mexican and U.S. authorities, including the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are trying to determine whether Wal-Mart bribed Mexican authorities to obtain permits necessary to accelerate expansion in Mexico.
"Yesterday's ruling was limited to procedural questions about whether plaintiffs had the right to inspect certain company documents. It had nothing to do with the merits of the allegations," Wal-Mart spokesman Brooke Buchanan said Thursday.
Wal-Mart appealed the previous ruling by then-Chancellor Leo Strine in 2013 ordering the retailer to hand over seven years of documents -- including some never reviewed by the Wal-Mart board and top officers.
-- Cyd King
State index up 0.24
on mixed-trading day
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, rose 0.24 to 355.71 Thursday.
"U.S. stocks ended mixed on Thursday as the markets weighed earnings reports from Caterpillar and Facebook," said John Blackwell, senior vice president and managing director of equity trading at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock.
Bank of the Ozarks climbed 1.4 percent in light trading.
Acxiom lost 1.5 percent on low volume.
Dillard's, Murphy Oil and Windstream each reached 52-week highs.
Total volume of the index was 17.7 million shares.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business on 07/25/2014