Park lease-proposal deadline delayed for two weeks

LITTLE ROCK — The deadline for golf entertainment vendors to submit proposals for an 18-acre lease of War Memorial Park has been pushed back two weeks.

The city, through a request for proposals, is seeking to lease a portion of the park to a nontraditional golf entertainment venue. The request opened July 1 and now closes Aug. 5. The initial closing date was Wednesday.

City code requires a lease opportunity for park land to be advertised in a newspaper four times seven days apart, according to Derrick Rainey, the city’s assistant purchasing manager. He said Monday the original date was the result of a clerical error.

Rainey said the city had received no proposals as of Monday morning.

The request for proposals also was revised to add a line in the qualifications section stating that the vendor shall agree to allow the city to retain the title to the property to be leased. The statement that the city would retain the title was already in another section of the document. It also was a clerical error that the statement wasn’t initially included in both places, Rainey said.

News that the city could lease part of the park has garnered much attention, rekindling a citywide conversation about how War Memorial Park should be used that began when golf operations on the 90-acre course ceased last summer because of city budget cuts.

The request for proposals states the city is looking to lease an 18-acre tract near South University Avenue and West Sixth Street to a vendor “providing golf entertainment for people of all skill and ability levels and ages” that is open year-round, integrates sports technology and serves food and beverages.

That describes Topgolf, a sports bar and high-tech driving range chain that Mayor

Frank Scott Jr. has said he wants to bring to the city. Little Rock officials met with the company in early 2019. A similar chain is Drive Shack. Topgolf has a location in Rogers.

Stephanie Jackson, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said earlier this month the city expects to receive multiple proposals from “businesses interested in creating a golf entertainment or entertainment leisure site at War Memorial Park.”

Some officials and community members say such a venue is at odds with recommendations that a mayoral task force convened to suggest new uses for the park presented to the board in January.

The group proposed preserving pockets of open space in the park while adding large and small ball fields, a bike park, pavilions and picnic areas, a dog park, a playground and an open-lawn stage.

Additionally, the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission told the board earlier this year that it would discourage commercial activities at the park, except for limited offerings in spirit with the outdoor nature of the park.

For the city to lease park land to a private business, state law requires that the city Board of Directors approve allowing the project to go forward. It takes six votes to pass such a resolution, City Attorney Tom Carpenter said.

Scott fielded questions about the request for proposals from at-large City Director Joan Adcock and Ward 4 City Director Capi Peck during a board policy discussion last week.

Adcock said she thought the Wednesday deadline was a short turnaround time for a 20-page request for proposals.

Peck said she felt blindsided by finding out about the request for proposals, “something so very important to the city, and controversial, and just something so important to so many people,” from local food blog Rock City Eats, which first reported on it.

Peck said she had received hundreds of comments from constituents on social media posts she made about it, most opposing that kind of development in the park.

“People are really, really upset about this — not everybody, but a lot of people — so I think that we must give people some time to try to digest this and weigh in, because we just have to, in my opinion,” Peck said.

Peck said she’s open to a Topgolf location in Little Rock, but she didn’t feel War Memorial Park was an appropriate location.

Ward 3 City Director Kathy Webb, whose district includes War Memorial Park, said in a Facebook post earlier this month she applauds efforts to bring “new and exciting ventures” to the city, but didn’t think the midtown park was a suitable location either.

Ward 6’s Doris Wright, who along with Peck is a board liaison to the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission,

said she was OK with a Topgolf location in the park.

At last week’s policy discussion, Scott responded that the city issues “hundreds, close to maybe thousands” of requests for proposals each year, and that the War Memorial request for proposals would go through the same process as any other.

“The [request for proposals] does not mean a decision has been made, it literally means to see what is out there,” he said. “We do not know what’s out there. I will say that the city of Little Rock is more than social media or a quick survey.”

The mayor added that there are a number of people who want to see entertainment in the park, and the city could do that while enhancing the public greenspace.

“It’s not an ‘either or,’ it can be a ‘both and,’” he said.

Scott added that nothing would be done with the park land without feedback from the community.