Airport, chamber move to formalize cooperation

Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field wants to hire the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce as an economic development consultant.

Just not right now, because of the covid-19 pandemic.

The agreement will not take effect until October, but top airport officials say it formalizes the productive relationship the airport has enjoyed with the chamber.

The chamber already has similar arrangements with the City of Little Rock and the Port of Little Rock.

Airport executives turned to the economic consultant model after they soured on previous agreements with commercial real estate firms to market airport property. The firms were paid on commission.

“Over time we let those expire, because we actually developed some of those leads,” Bryan Malinowski, the airport’s executive director, said Thursday. “Staff was generating some of those leads, and the way the contract was written, they received a commission regardless.”

The chamber will be paid no more than $25,000 under the one-year agreement. The airport has the option to extend it an additional two years on an annual basis.

“It’s money well-spent,” Malinowski said. “It’s far less than those commissions we were paying to commercial companies that were representing us in the past.”

The chamber has worked with the airport on several projects. Malinowski credited the organization’s staff for its work on the Dassault Falcon Jet expansion several years ago and on bringing the aerospace company Afterglow to the airport, as well as assistance the chamber has provided at international air shows.

“The chamber has always been a partner of ours,” he said.

The chamber is still working with the airport and will continue to do so even before the contract takes effect, Jay Chesshir, the organization’s president and chief executive officer, told members of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission’s lease and consultant selection committee.

“We have a couple of different prospects looking at one of your buildings now,” he said. “We have a second prospect considering another building here on the airport.”

A formal agreement will provide the commission and airport staff with monthly and quarterly updates on the economic development work.

“I personally applaud this,” said committee chairman Meredith Catlett. “I think we share a common goal to develop the area. Now we’ve simply codified it into a business relationship that I personally think will be much more effective than what we’ve done in the past.”

The chamber’s proposal was judged the best of three the airport received in response to a request for proposals for an economic development consultant.

The others came from Camion Associates, a Los Angeles real estate firm, and CBRE/ Con-Real. CBRE is a national real estate firm and Con-Real has an Arkansas presence and has done work for the airport.

In selecting the chamber, Malinowski said that “one of the things that stood out is that they have better tie-ins with the state in terms of economic development, pilot programs and quick-action funds with the governor.

“They are additional pieces that are Little Rock, Arkansasspecific that sometimes can get the deal done.”

Malinowski said the agreement is at the threshold where it doesn’t require commission approval but that he presented it to the committee Thursday in order to get commission “buy-in.” The committee voted 3-0 to send it to the commission, which meets Tuesday.