The Fort Smith City Board of Directors convened for a study session to review the master plan for the Acme Brick property, discuss ongoing infrastructure projects, address the financial status of Parrot Island Water Park, and review compliance with state statutes and best practices. The session featured presentations from consultants on property alternatives and extensive board deliberation regarding flood mitigation priorities, fiscal constraints, and community engagement preferences.
Acme Brick Property Master Plan (Concept Alternatives):
Miss Laura's Museum Maintenance:
Consent Decree Projects (SSA Remedial Measures):
Parrot Island Water Park Lease & Audit:
Parrot Island Water Slide Installation:
Good evening and welcome to the Fort Smith City Board of Directors Study Session on this January 13th of 2026. Keep in mind these meetings are being televised live for the benefit of our residents who can't be with us in person. Um couple of housekeeping notes. Keep in mind that there are no public comments during the study session and even doing the citizens' form. Uh you required uh there would be no discussion on items that are on tonight's agenda. Okay. With that, we will go to the first item on the agenda. Thank you, Mayor. The first item of the tonight is an update and presentation from RDG planning and design on the master plan project for the acne brick property. The city purchased this property in 2023 for the joint purpose of stormwater mitigation, property reclamation, and parks amenities. While work on the stormwater management portion of the project is progressing, the city contracted with RDG planning and design about a year ago to solicit community feedback and present options as to what the city might do with the property above and beyond the stormwater management component. At this point, I will ask uh Scott Crawford and Brian Trustee from RDG to uh go through their presentation and uh answer questions that the board may have. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff, and members of the board and those in attendance. As Jeff mentioned, my name is Scott Crawford. I'm with RDG Planning Design. Joining me today is Brian Trusty with PROS Consulting, one of our consulting partners that's been working on the project since we began. And what we'd like to do tonight is uh share with you the process that we've gone through to date, uh, the material that's been generated, the feedback we've received from the community thus far, and then uh a brief overview of what the next steps are. And we'll go through this pretty quickly. If you have questions, feel free to chime in. We can certainly entertain questions as we go or at the end. The overall uh cadence of what we'd like to review is give you an overview of the master planning part A process that we've been through, summarize the guiding principles that were established by the various committees that oversaw the project, uh, walk through the preliminary concept alternatives for the property that have been developed to date, share with you several case studies that are similar to what is being articulated in those alternatives, and then spend about the second half of our presentation summarizing the community engagement and feedback that we've received today. So without uh further ado, the master planning part A, if you recall when RDG was contracted with the city, we identified part A and Part B master planning services. We are nearing the conclusion of part A at this point. This is the consulting team that's been working on the project from the very beginning that included us, RDG, Brian with PROS Consulting, as well as his uh colleague Dalton and McClellan uh consulting engineers here in Fort Smith, Chris, Andy, and Ben have been assisting with that um here locally. The committee structure that was established was there was a core team that provided oversight for the project and guidance, a technical committee that consists of several directors within the city to provide technical assistance and review of the concept alternatives as they were being created, and a steering committee of other community constituents and leaders throughout Fort Smith that all met on a regular cadence through the process. Phase one or part A included initial goal setting, which established the guiding principles that we're about to jump into, extensive inventory and analysis, some marketing market analysis and benchmarking against other communities and project types of similar typology, extensive coordination with the stormwater management and mitigation project that Half Associates was leading with civil engineering or with uh city engineering, and then uh that culminated in the concept uh alternatives that were developed that we're going to share tonight. That process uh started in earnest in April, and we're here today in January to get uh final feedback from the uh board of directors. We'll do a similar presentation with the parks and recreation commission tomorrow and collect their feedback and then bundle all that up into a phase 1A deliverable to Sarah and the Parks and Recreation Department that will essentially be the first three chapters of the master plan report. So the guiding principles that were established from the project, these were several of the images that resonated and scored very, very highly through a pretty extensive visual listening exercise that we did with the technical committee, the steering committee, and then asked the general public to weigh in during the public open house in December as far as the character, recreational opportunities and overall aesthetic that was desired for the property in the future. Those informed the six guiding principles that were established. Number one being flood mitigation and stormwater management above all. Number two being designing with nature to inspire, engage, and connect people back to nature, low maintenance and operational resiliency, uniqueness of place, accessibility, and overall economic benefit to Fort Smith. And we'll go through just a short bit of detail on each one of these. The flood mitigation and stormwater management, first and foremost for the property to mitigate uh flooding downstream through stormwater detention basins. Designing with nature to connect people back to nature through the decades of mining and brick production that took place on a very heavy industrial scale to bring and restore uh the native environment and connect people back to that on the property. Low maintenance and operational resiliency has been top of mind, durable materials, resiliency of how they're actually put together, and operational efficiencies to benefit the city long term. Uniqueness of place for those of you that had the opportunity to be out on the site. It's a quite a compelling experience. It has one of the highest elevation points in the county that overlooks the river valley and downtown with some pretty impressive views up on the top ridge and a very expansive open area down on the lower area. Accessibility, designing experiences for people of all generations, mobilities and accessible opportunities for people to experience things together. And the sixth and final guiding principle was overall economic uh benefit to this to the community through direct and indirect dollars that could be realized and/or generated both in the short term and long term from development of this property into a public amenity. The three primary concept alternatives that were developed were all grounded in those guiding principles. Each one has a different level of emphasis and articulation of the guiding principles. And these the information that we're about to walk through is all available to anyone in the public that wants to view it on the website that was launched shortly after the public open house, the third week of December, and we'll walk through a summary of that feedback that we received. But connecting this park and its location to the community. Fort Smith is very fortunate to have this much public open land available directly in the center of your community to be converted into public use and connecting that to your existing and future planned trail system. And focusing again on that story of water. This is essentially to identify there are on the on the right-hand side of the slide and the darker and lighter blue are the two major watersheds that flow through this site that will actually detain the water on the property, slow it down as it's released out further downstream to mitigate some of the flooding challenges that have been occurring further downstream. And that will happen in kind of three different areas on the property that we'll talk about in just a moment.