The property at 109 W. Belding St. has sat idle since the Boys & Girls Club of Hot Springs' charter was revoked seven weeks ago, but revitalization is on the way.
A plan announced Friday by the BGCHS and Champion Christian College boards of directors and the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission intends to reopen the building by next month, reviving the after-school care the Boys & Girls Club offered while returning youth baseball to fields steeped in the nostalgia of the city's history as a spring training mecca for the Major and Negro leagues during the first half of last century.
A unanimous vote Thursday of the BGCHS board donated the building to Champion Christian College, which plans to use the space as an adjunct to its campus at 600 Garland Ave. during school hours and as a community center during the afternoon and evenings.
Champion's board will vote on accepting the donation when it convenes Tuesday. Ralph Ohm, chairman of Champion's board of trustees, said the community center will continue to serve the surrounding neighborhoods and work to draw a countywide constituency with programs that include tutoring, GED courses and cultural enrichment.
"We want everyone to know that we plan on getting this building back open as quickly possible and to let parents know that their kids will have a place to go this summer," Ohm said. "We'll continue to operate similar type programs, but with what we hope are a lot more choices. Our goal for the after-school program is to be available to anybody and everybody."
The BGCHS board unanimously voted two weeks ago to donate the baseball fields to the ad commission. Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said the transfer will keep youth baseball alive in Hot Springs, with the fields hosting area teams during the week and large tournaments on the weekend that draw out-of-town teams and nonresident sales tax revenue to city and ad commission coffers.
The commission will vote on accepting the donation when it convenes later this month. The city has to approve a lot split separating the building from the surrounding area on the northernmost of the property's two parcels before titles can transfer to the college and ad commission.
"It will enhance tourism when we get the fields back on the weekends, but it will also save youth baseball in our community," Arrison said. "We're losing residents because they don't want to move here because their children can't play baseball. It's going to increase sports tourism, but this is a chance for us to step up and not only bring more tourism in but enhance our quality of life and make sure this is a better place to live."
Arrison said Friday's announcement doesn't mean the commission has cooled on the prospects of developing a multisports complex on a reclaimed vanadium mine off Highway 270 east.
"We haven't given up on the athletic complex site," he said. "We're still working closely with the folks at UMETCO to acquire that property. Here we have some of the most historic land in all of Garland County that's already flat. We need to go in and see what we have to do to make it the quality fields our community deserves."
BGCHS board member Scott Dews said the college and ad commission rescued the property from an uncertain fate. The Boys & Girls Clubs of America pulled the local chapter's charter after annual operating deficits from 2014 to 2016 depleted the more than $500,000 reserve reported in 2013 to less than $90,000 at the end of 2016.
"When you dissolve a nonprofit, the (Internal Revenue Service) requires you deed it to another nonprofit or sell it and give the money to a nonprofit," Dews said. "We wanted to transfer it to a nonprofit or nonprofits that could use it for similar purposes.
"We feel that we've found that. Champion is very mission-driven. They want to take care of the kids, and they want to serve the community. And then being able to preserve the history of the fields, by turning that into a sports complex Hot Springs deserves, we feel it's a win-win."
Ohm said the lawsuit BGCHS board member Willie McCoy filed in February to keep the club open doesn't bear on Friday's announcement.
"We're not a party to that lawsuit," he said. "We're not involved in that lawsuit. It's my understanding that the lawsuit was designed primarily to interfere with the transfer of the property to the (Hot Springs Family YMCA). Since that's not going to occur officially now, it seems to me that litigation is moot. It's not slowing us down. We're moving forward."
Local on 04/14/2018