Majestic Hotel site proposal advances
Hot Springs board authorizes negotiations with property redevelopment team
HOT SPRINGS — The prospects for the forlorn property at the crossroads of downtown have brightened, stirring hope that life can return to the vacant 101 Park Ave. site that has sat idle since 2006.
The Hot Springs Board of Directors has authorized the city to negotiate the parameters of those prospects, adopting a resolution Tuesday that allows exclusive negotiations to begin with the team that submitted the only responsive proposal for the redevelopment of the cityowned Majestic Hotel site.
City Manager Bill Burrough and City Attorney Brian Albright have the board’s blessing to negotiate with the Grand Point Investment Group and Cienda Partners-led team that has been working for several years to bring what it has billed as a $110 million wellness and water-centric destination resort to the Majestic property. The concept includes The Residences at the Majestic, condominiums offering downtown living.
“I have faith in you guys that this is going to go well,” District 1 Director Erin Holliday, whose district includes the 5-acre Majestic site the city condemned and acquired in 2015, told Burrough and Albright. “I know you guys have been listening, and I know the city has been listening to our residents. So I expect the result to be to that end.”
Residents who weighed in at Tuesday’s board meeting expressed the need for outdoor thermal pools on the site, a concept that received broad support during public planning sessions facilitated by the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design last year at the Hot Springs Convention Center. The market study Design Workshop completed last year for the city said a standalone, thermal water complex would be an economically sustainable endeavor, satisfying all of the criteria the board established for the site’s redevelopment in 2017.
The concept Grand Point and Cienda submitted in response to the city’s initial request for proposals included thermal pools on the north end of the site but not in the public-access area fronting Park Avenue. The proposal submitted in response to the subsequent request for proposal that closed last month hasn’t been made public, as the city has said the document doesn’t become subject to the state’s open-records law until negotiations have ended and the project is awarded.
“I understand there are a significant number of people who would like to see open pools there, however, we did not receive any firm that was willing to do that,” Burrough said. “… It’s very difficult to negotiate a pool setting when there’s no one there who’s willing to build them.”
The initial proposal submitted by DHM Design, the other firm that responded to both request for proposals, said it could design a thermal pool complex. The proposal didn’t explain how the project would be built or financed, whereas Grand Point and Cienda’s first submission indicated its Hot Springs and Dallas-based team would design, build, finance and operate its project.
The city said last week that it had confirmed Grand Point and Cienda have the financial wherewithal to realize their resort/residential concept. The lack of such an assurance caused the city to reject the group’s first proposal.
Burrough said he encouraged people who presented the city with drawings and concepts for a thermal water complex to find investors, but none responded to the city’s request for proposals.
“When you have a development team that’s willing to take the risk and put $110 million on the line, it’s very difficult to tell them how they’re going to spend that,” he said in response to calls for a pool complex. “Those are the things we’ll be discussing in trying to massage and maneuver and working towards a vision where we could see some type of a pool setting.
“We’re way premature from that point. This is just allowing us to get to the table with them and actually start digging into the proposal they submitted. We’ve got the guiding values that this board has set. The RFP was built around that. We’ve got the market studies. We’ve got the information from when we had open meetings at the convention center.
“We have all that information, and all of that will be taken into consideration as we sit at the table and start having these kinds of conversations.”
Burrough said discussions will include recouping the more than $2 million the city has spent from its solid waste fund to acquire the property, demolish its condemned structures and secure a certificate of environmental clearance.
“We want to make sure we recoup those over this term that we have with this company,” he said. “We hope to have this coming back before the board relatively soon. We basically have a shot clock of 90 days in the RFP. If we can’t come to a mutual agreement, then it will provide the board to direct staff to continue to work with this group or to move forward with an additional RFP.”