Library considers Hillcrest Hall sale
Officials at the Central Arkansas Library System are considering selling the event venue known as Hillcrest Hall located at 1501 Kavanaugh Boulevard.
In a report prepared for a library system board meeting Thursday, Executive Director Nate Coulter wrote that he had been contacted by at least three parties that had expressed an interest in the property.
Two other top library system officials, Lance Ivy and Jo Spencer, "are in the process of engaging a real estate broker to assist [the library system] in evaluating those who might like to buy the property," Coulter wrote. "We are still awaiting the appraisal that was commissioned by our lawyer last month."
The library system purchased Hillcrest Hall in 2013 from the Greater Little Rock Council of Garden Clubs for $26,000, property records show.
Since then, the venue has become "a significant expense to the library," Coulter wrote in a March report for the library system's board. Total operating and capital expenditures from 2014 through February 2023 have exceeded $259,000, he wrote.
"The goal was to make it a programming venue. As it turned out, the building had severe mechanical limitations that rendered most programming impossible," Coulter wrote. "There was never sufficient staff available to do regular programming there."
The 2013 sale agreement allowed the garden group the right of first refusal if the library system later chose to sell the property, according to Coulter's report.
However, Terri Waterman of the Arkansas Federation of Garden Clubs had informed officials that the now-disbanded Greater Little Rock Council of Garden Clubs "had no capacity to buy the property back from the library," Coulter wrote.