FORT SMITH —Fort Smith is looking to sell two parcels in the Chaffee Crossing area, including the site of an incomplete sports complex that was supposed to have been developed by former Sen. Jake Files and his business partner.
The two parcels total 68.16 acres, according to a news release Tuesday from the city. The land includes a rectangular piece of property at 7709 Taylor Ave. that runs east and west along Taylor Avenue and is comprised of two tracts that, when combined, measure 5.26 acres, as well as an abutting 62.9-acre plot between Taylor Avenue, Ward Avenue and Roberts Boulevard that was originally intended to be the home of the River Valley Sports Complex.
“At this point, the best thing to do is offer the land for sale and recoup whatever public monies we can that were lost when [the complex] failed,” City Administrator Carl Geffken said in the release.
“Our RFP [Request for Proposals] last year, seeking a contractor or developer to step in and finish the sports complex or do something similar, attracted one proposal. We worked with that party for several months but just couldn’t help them develop their proposal into something viable for both them and the city.”
The sports complex’s developers, Files and Lee Webb, approached the city in 2014 looking to build a tournament-quality complex of eight ball fields, as well as amenities, to draw in softball and baseball teams from around the region to Fort Smith as an economic boost to the area, according to Arkansas Democrat-Gazette articles.
The Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority had donated the complex property to the city. The Fort Smith Board of Directors passed a resolution approving the acceptance of the deed for the land in June 2012, according to a copy of the resolution that was included in the official “Invitation to Bid.”
The city budgeted $1.6 million to the project. Files and Webb were to complete it with donations of work, material and labor. However, they missed deadlines that city directors continued to extend until the end of 2016, at which point they expressed their desire to withdraw from the project.
The Board of Directors voted to terminate the city’s agreement with Files and Webb in February 2017. Before this, the two had spent $1.08 million of the city’s money on the project. City directors also demanded that Files and Webb return the $26,945.91 in state General Improvement Fund grant money they received for infrastructure work for the project.
Files pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Jan. 29, 2018, to charges of wire fraud and money laundering in connection with taking the grant money. He also pleaded guilty to bank fraud in connection with pledging a forklift he did not own as collateral for a bank loan.
He began serving an 18-month sentence the following August. Files moved from a federal prison in El Reno, Okla., to a halfway house in Little Rock earlier this year in preparation for a Nov. 11 scheduled release.
Should the complex property be sold, Geffken said, funding from the sale would go back into the capital improvement plan budget for the City Parks and Recreation Department, where it would be reallocated.
Geffken said work that has already been done on the complex property includes lights and light poles, as well as some fencing, which the city will look to reutilize. Two buildings were built on the property as well, although city officials believe there are issues with them. It is also possible the city will put materials from the buildings up for auction, including bricks and lumber.
The complex was originally scheduled to be finished in 2015, Geffken said. The city is using the smaller parcel for storage.
Legal notice of the offer for sale of the properties appeared in Tuesday’s edition of the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, according to the release, and a request for bids has been posted on the city’s website on the purchasing department page. Sealed bids are due no later than 2 p.m. Nov. 5 at Fort Smith’s municipal offices at 623 Garrison Ave.
Geffken said the city does not have to accept the bids once it gets them.