Chamber panel presses need for added security at ACTI
The Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce’s Future of the Army Navy Hospital Committee addressed Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club members Wednesday about the pressing need to implement security for the Arkansas Career Training Institute complex to secure its future and protect the integrity of Hot Springs National Park.
“This is where we need your help,” committee member Clay Farrar told the Rotarians, who met at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts. “On your table we’ve handed out contact information for our senators and our congressman and how you email them, and quite frankly we’ve got to get their attention. We need their help and it’s going to take a number of people in town sending an email so this rises to a level of priority.”
He said the committee is asking for three things: a security fence to be installed by next year; security patrols consisting of three people working 24-hour shifts; and a designated Washington, D.C., official to call if a natural disaster affects the building.
Committee member Jack Porter said once he learned the private security used to protect the complex would be leaving along with the ACTI staff, he immediately thought about the Majestic Hotel fire.
“I immediately thought about the fact that it took nearly 50% of the water that we have in Hot Springs to put that fire out, and I thought about the buildings that are very close to the national park,” he said. “Literally trees in the national park growing over some of those tinderbox buildings. And I can see an influx of people coming in there trying to get warm just like they did in the Majestic Hotel.
“My concern immediately turned from the building, which is a concern for all of us, to the bigger picture of this can literally affect downtown if we don’t make some strategic advancements in securing this operation.”
Porter noted that if a fire was to start, there is no way to get to the back side of the building because of the mountain, so it’s going to “literally burn up to the mountain tower before anybody can really do anything about it.”
Committee member Mike White said that, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, 20% of the water flowing into thermal springs is groundwater, and the complex sits within a groundwater recharge area.
“Now if there is a fire up there, there’s a lot of building materials that in and of themselves are not hazardous, but when you add fire and add all the water necessary to put that fire out, you’ve created a toxic stew that goes somewhere, and it’s going to go downhill,” he said. “Most of it will probably fall into Reserve Street, but a sizable portion of it will flow down into Bathhouse Row and a portion of it will be absorbed into the groundwater. And those contaminants, once they’re in the groundwater, they stay there for a long time. So there’s a very real risk if we have a fire up there, it could contaminate the thermal springs for years.”
After discussing the importance of preserving the complex, the committee members discussed the possibility of one day repurposing the facility.
“We’re sitting and living proof that miracles happen,” Farrar said. “If 30 years ago I came to anyone and said there would be a math and science school at the old St. Joseph’s on Whittington Avenue, you’d have asked me what kind of marijuana I was smoking. This place is proof that you can repurpose big buildings and big facilities, so we don’t want to be totally negative.”
Porter said the building could be used for two things: medical purposes or educational purposes.
“It doesn’t have to leave the state if it’s used for one of those two things,” he said. “That’s our first goal, is to get ideas that won’t get it out of the state of Arkansas.”
Farrar said the state of Arkansas has spent $15 million in upkeep for the 210,000 square foot building over the past 15 to 20 years.
He said the committee wants to “bang into everyone’s head” that the complex is in danger of having the same fate as the VA Hospital on Roosevelt Road in Little Rock.
“It has been shut down for 40 years, for 40 years it has had that fence around there, for 40 years it has been (empty),” he said. “That is where we’re headed with ACTI unless we do something.”