What’s Happening
July 14-20, 2025
By Jeff Yates
Great googly moogly! The year is half over already. I’ve seen a couple of memes portending that it is now officially Halloween season. My wife is onboard with that. And I guess that effectively it is true. I know that the Halloween stores, such as Spirit Halloween are already getting locations ready. I talked to one operator, and he said that they aim to open in August. Back to school and Halloween at the same time. That’s incongruous to me.
Anyway, half-way through the year seems like a good time to step off the soapbox I’ve been on for some months now and take a look at some of the deals booked so far. If you have any other news sources at all then you surely know that the Attorney General’s office resuscitated the Boyle building and moved a few blocks downtown. The refurbished, renovated, restored property is now the Bob. R. Brooks Justice Building. This $35,000,000+ investment is a grand addition in the revival of Main Street. The Lyon College School of Dental Medicine opened in Riverdale. The Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands relocated offices blocks away from the State Capitol to a building in The Ranch neighborhood on Highway 10, just southeast of Pinnacle Mountain. Renovations of the former Veterans Administration hospital building just northwest of the intersection of Interstate 30 and Roosevelt Road are substantially complete and the project is now open as the Lofts at SoMa. There’s a little something for all at this property that has been reimagined as market rate apartments, even indoor pickleball. This isn’t an exhaustive list. These are just a few of the things that stood out to me so far. Please don’t get miffed because something was left out. Send me a note and we’ll make sure to get it in the next roundup.
Let’s look at the list of sales in excess of $10,000,000 in value. The Assessor’s office gives 20 parcels. Regular readers know by now though that having 20 parcels doesn’t mean 20 transactions. Many transactions are comprised of multiple parcels. Starting with Heifer Project International’s sale of the downtown campus to the Bill Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The sale was comprised of four parcels that totaled just over twenty acres of land. The largest parcel is 18.42 acres, with a 3.23-acre parcel on the river and a couple of others less than an acre each. Two of those parcels had buildings on them and the total of three primary buildings, a shed and a greenhouse totaled approximately 150,900 square feet. What was the total price you ask? Well, the whole kit and kaboodle sold for $27,000,000. And the transaction is a shining example of real estate brokerage – go ask the neighbor if they are interested in owing the property. Worked like a charm this time.
A few blocks west of the Clinton Foundation purchase was a sale of the Residence Inn Marriott located at 219 River Market Avenue. RILR River Market, LLC paid $11,275,000 to SREIT RI Little Rock PropCo, LLC for this hospitality venue. This is the 3rd sale of the 107-unit hotel since 2014, with fluctuating values of the transactions. This sale works out at just a bit north of $105,000 per room. While looking at per unit values, let’s look at the sale of the Georgetown Apartments in Midtown. This apartment community is located across McKinley Street from where Target is now – part of the replacement of University Mall. The project has 156 units sitting on 6 acres. Two alphabet-soup entities traded title to the two parcels making up the complex for a total of $10,350,000. When I divide the big number by the little number, I get $66,346 per door. Let’s finish up the per-door review with a product type that I know even less about than apartments. Brookside Drive Property, LLC paid $14,530,918 to Cottage Lane Health and Rehab, LLC for the Brookside Health and Rehab facility at 800 Brookside Drive. That’s north of Rodney Parham Road, just before you get to Reservoir Road as you’re headed west. With 143 units at the facility, the math is $101,615 per unit.
Shifting to something more familiar, to me anyway, the McCain Plaza shopping center on McCain Boulevard traded back in March for $25,846,449. The center is about 177,000 square feet. My sometimes-suspect math comes up with $146 per square foot. DDR sold the center in 2016 to a group out of Dallas for $23,150,000. The Dallas group made a sizeable investment in the center and brought in some new tenants, including a Dick’s Sporting Goods, and then sold the center in 2022 for $31,250,000. Changing gears again takes us east in North Little Rock to the Galloway area off the Interstate 40 corridor. ET V Little Rock, LLC paid $86,075,000 to Cubes at Little Rock, LLC for the Lowe’s Distribution Center at 13101 Highway 70. This practically new property is 1,213,500 square feet. Yep. It is over one million square feet. And there are 115 total acres with it. On the building square foot math though, that’s just a smidge under $71 per square foot. Heading south across the Arkansas River takes us to our next stop on this review. It is a $36,485,000 sale of the HMS Manufacturing facility by HMS MFG CO, LLC to FNLR Pinafore, LLC. The project consists of approximately 557,950 square feet on about 25.5 acres. That sale tips the scales at just over $65 per square foot.
We finish up the list of sales greater than $10,000,000 so far this year just a little way down the road, back at the Port of Little Rock. Several months ago, we covered the Port of Little Rock’s purchase of several hundred acres of land. The Port subsequently sold several hundred acres to Willowbend Capital, LLC. It has been widely reported elsewhere that this sale is for yet another Amazon facility. Folks, with the successful relocation of the VOR cone – the Port of Little Rock is positioned for more growth. There are already thousands and thousands of people driving to the Port every day for work. There’s room out there now for thousands and thousands more jobs. When you’re talking about economic development in central Arkansas, or metro Little Rock, or whatever you wanna call the region – the Port of Little Rock is part of that discussion.
Hope you found something interesting this month. Check back again next month to read more about what’s happening in Little Rock commercial real estate. If you have questions or news, or any interesting commercial real estate news or events to share, you can reach me at jyates@flakecompany.com.
