Don Salmon doesn't golf and doesn't want to manage a golf course, he said last week, so owning the former Stone Links Golf Course in North Little Rock wasn't his intention when he bid on part of 664 acres being sold at a December auction that included the closed course.
"We bought it by accident, to tell you the truth," said Salmon, who, with his twin brother, Tom, are executives with Pat Salmon & Sons Inc. and already owned about 260 acres of adjacent farmland. "I bought the 210 acres that touched me. That was all I wanted. When the rest didn't sell, they said, 'why don't the Salmons take it for the same price?'"
Under the corporation name of Faulkner Lake 391, the brothers purchased the farmland and the golf course for $1.73 million. Pat Salmon & Sons Inc. is a North Little Rock-based company that is the largest ground transportation supplier to the U.S. Postal Service.
The Dec. 11 auction also caught by surprise many residents of the Stone Links subdivision, whose luxury homes are adjacent to the closed golf course, said Shannon Armand, president of the Stone Links Neighborhood Association.
"We still didn't realize until the actual auction what exactly was going to happen," Armand said. "People were a little surprised the golf course was going to fold."
After dozens of Stone Links residents flooded a North Little Rock City Council meeting Jan. 26 with concerns about what would happen to the 200-plus acres of golf course property, which has hundreds of acres of farmland adjacent to it, Mayor Joe Smith reached out to the Salmons for help.
After discussions with the Salmons and the Stone Links Neighborhood Association, Smith announced last week that the golf course property would be donated to the city. The Salmons will keep the adjacent farmland they purchased.
The city is working with Stone Links homeowners to decide whether to develop single-family homes on the property, turn it into a city park or use it for some other purpose that's yet to be determined, Smith said.
"Tom and Don Salmon are old friends of my family, and I've known them since I was 5 years old," Smith said. "I thought that the best thing to do when the issue came up was to sit down and talk to them. While we were tossing around ideas, I asked if they would consider donating the property to the city.
"Don called me back a week later and said that North Little Rock has been so good to their family that they would love to have the opportunity to donate the golf course to the city," Smith said. "This may be one of those situations that's a win-win for all, where we can make something special for central Arkansas."
Don Salmon said in an interview that the donation has "no strings attached."
"I'm giving it to the city," Salmon said. "They can do what they want with it. Put in a swimming pool, a golf course, a day camp, I don't care. That's my position on it. We'll donate it to them with no strings attached.
"I didn't mean to make my neighbors mad," Salmon said. "I don't want to have trouble with my neighbors."
The neighborhood association, Armand said, is happy that the city has become involved and that residents and city officials are "working together" for the owners of the approximately 250 homes in Stone Links.
Along with several other subdivisions, Stone Links is on North Little Rock's eastern edge, and "everyone is always concerned as to how it grows," she said.
"I think the best thing [for the golf course] would be if part of it could be developed and some of it is used as a park area and let the community utilize the [golf] clubhouse," she said. "That's what we thought would be best. Develop part of it, then saving part for a community center or something."
Stone Links Neighborhood Association members came up with a list of nine possibilities for the property. Keeping the property a golf course is the first recommendation, said North Little Rock Alderman Maurice Taylor, who represents the Ward 2 neighborhood. Continuing as a golf course isn't really an option, however, Taylor said.
"We told [Armand] where the city was with the golf course and that we didn't have the money to lose $250,000 a year on a golf course," Taylor said. "We kind of put the ball in their court for them to give us some ideas as to what they would like to see happen."
Other ideas include having the state Game and Fish Commission manage the land and stock a small pond there with fish, or convert it into a nature park with the golf-cart paths becoming walking trails.
"A lot of things are possible," Smith said.
"Maybe we can develop part of it and take the money we get from that development and invest it into a park or whatever. Of course, we're certainly very pleased with the generosity of the Salmon family, and we would like to make it something as special as we can in that location but that won't kill the city budget."
Metro on 03/09/2015