The top executive at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, Adams Field, wants the Chick-fil-A outlet at the state's largest airport to open sooner rather than later.
Many of the restaurants have been slow to reopen as passenger levels remain well below the numbers the airport enjoyed before the coronavirus pandemic shut down air travel for most of April and May.
A member of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, Bill Walker, has been pressing to see two of the top three restaurants in sales at the airport -- Chick-fil-A and a Starbucks -- to reopen and argues that the contract between the concessionaire, HMS Host, and the airport requires them to open.
"Your two highest producing brands -- Chick-fil-A and Starbucks -- are not available to our passengers," he said Tuesday at the commission's monthly meeting. "It is OK to work with them but in doing so it needs to be per the contract. If we're going to give them relief ... any exception to the contract. It needs to come before this commission for approval."
Bryan Malinowski, the airport's executive director, said the contract likely contained force majeure language that would permit the closings.
"I think we can all agree that the covid-19 pandemic is an act of God," he said. "It falls in the force majeure area. I think it behooves us to find ways that we can work together with them to do this."
Walker disagreed.
"There are a lot of people who don't necessarily think covid is an act of God," he said. "Your own president said it was something other than an act of God. It was something about China. But whatever the reason is, I'm not sure if the impact we're seeing is an act of God or it may be the result of the ignorance of science or however your political persuasion might take you. I don't see it as a tornado, for example, that we cannot stop or do anything about it. Or an earthquake."
For now, two restaurants are open at the airport. They are Great American Bagel and Chili's. The latter had the highest sales at the airport in 2019, a total of $2.4 million, according to airport executives. Forty-nine percent of its sales came from alcohol and 51% from food.
The Chick-fil-A outlet grossed $1.2 million and the Starbucks, $1.1 million last year. Both are on the concourse.
The Starbucks is scheduled to open by the end of October. Under a schedule suggested by HMS Host, Chick-fil-A wouldn't reopen until passenger levels returned to 85% of pre-pandemic levels or about 80,000 boardings a month.
Last month, the airport had fewer than 40,000 boardings. As a result, restaurant and retail income for the airport has fallen to about half of the pre-pandemic levels.
Malinowsk said the Host proposal wasn't "optimal" but it also was a "starting point."
"If we can work with our concessionaires to find a schedule that gets the locations open in a meaningful time -- not years and years but this year, you get more people back to work and more products available to our passengers," he told the commission.
The discussion came a week after it was disclosed that Host notified its workers at Clinton National in August that they would lose their jobs Oct. 15 if they weren't recalled by that date. Airport officials said the notices went to 65 employees.