The trustees for the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System on Tuesday authorized the sale of the system's properties in Arkansas, except for the system's headquarters in Little Rock and the Victory Building in Little Rock, if their sales price is the most recent appraised value or higher.
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The system's other properties in Arkansas include the Woodland Heights retirement center in Little Rock, the state Insurance Department building in Little Rock, the current Rose Law Firm building in Little Rock, and the state Department of Human Services buildings in Texarkana and West Memphis, said system Executive Director George Hopkins.
Under the resolution that the trustees adopted Tuesday, they would have to approve any sale of system property in Arkansas that is for less than the appraised value. The resolution allows the system's staff to retain one or more of the system's existing brokers to market and represent the system based on existing manager agreements.
Last December, the trustees authorized selling system-owned buildings at 720 W. Third St. and 1512 W. Third St. in Little Rock, as well as system-owned land consisting of 52.72 acres in Chenal Valley in west Little Rock and 3 acres near the old Memorial Hospital site in North Little Rock at the appraised value or higher.
Any proposed sale for less than the appraised value required approval of the the trustees. The system envisioned developing a retirement center on the Chenal Valley property before the project was scrapped about a decade ago.
The system subsequently sold one of those properties at 720 W. Third St -- the old Rose Law Firm building -- for $850,000.
In April, the trustees approved the sale of the system-owned Southcenter shopping mall in Hot Springs for $12.75 million.
Hopkins told the trustees Tuesday that the system has properties scattered throughout the state, and there have been more inquiries about selling property.
Properties directly held by the system "are more labor intensive and often don't have the attractive returns they once did, especially some of the older properties we've had 10 or 15 years," he said.
"The thought was ... to let the people know they are available for sale," Hopkins said.
"If they are sold, we just redirect that money into funds and other real assets [so it has] a better balanced portfolio [and] more diversification," he said of the retirement system with more than $14 billion in investments.
Afterward, Hopkins said the system hasn't received any offers to purchase any of the properties that the trustees authorized Tuesday for sale.
The system is required to get appraisals of its properties every two years "and if somebody was making an offer, we probably would go reappraise it just to make sure that the price hadn't changed the last two years," he said.
A section on 06/18/2014