Title: How the Pratt/Archer Family Lost Markham Hill to a Developer – Part 2
(from Friends of Markham Hill, an effort to save the mountain from development and make it a nature, wildlife, historic, and Native American preserve with soft-surface trails in the middle of Fayetteville, Arkansas)
Part 2: Sean Shoemaker’s Interview with Julian Archer
Sean Shoemaker, a senior at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, researched and wrote a lengthy article for his journalism class in February 2020 entitled, “Preserving Markham, and the discord between neighbors and developers”. During his research, he interviewed Julian Archer on the phone. Julian lives in Des Moines, Iowa. Following are excerpts from this interview. I did not change Sean’s wording or punctuation. I added some bracketed comments for clarity. For Sean’s complete article, go to his website theshoemakerfits.health.blog and scroll down past the tiger story.
“I asked Julian personally how the property exchanged ownership from him to Specialized Real Estate Group [SREG]. When he inherited the land his mother [Evangeline Pratt Waterman Archer] willed him in 1980, he began to negotiate with the University of Arkansas to redraw property lines. ‘We negotiated for six years until we finally reached a settlement, trading land value for value, dollar per dollar, and gave the University one consolidated piece of property [62-63 acres] on the northwest side of the hill.’ Archer said.” [This corresponds to the land and property that Joy Pratt Markham willed to the University. The remaining 144 acres belonged to Julian’s mother.]
“’ [In 2006] My wife and I decided to create an inn and an event space, the barn. The barn that’s up there, I designed and built, and then we created the Inn, which saved the Pratt house. It was falling apart, and when I say it was falling apart, it was really falling apart.’ Arched added.”
“Several years after the Pratt Inn and Event Barn were built, Julian and Jane Archer had their 144-acre property appraised. It came to around $5 million.”
“’Then we had some minor technical problems which allowed Simmons bank to institute some bankruptcy actions against us.’ Archer said. “
“Archer said that he was then deceived by the bank, and they asked him when he could pay them for the debt he owed. ‘I said fine, I went in to make the payment, and they said we refuse the money, what they wanted was to get the property, they wanted us just to turn the property over to them so they could sell it for a huge profit.’ Archer said.”
“Julian then filed for bankruptcy with some protection, but unfortunately he lost due to the lawyer he had chosen. Julian then explained how he tried to raise money to get the bank out of the picture.”
“’ [In 2005] we created what’s called a Planned Zoning District, it’s called a PZD, and we put 72 acres into that PZD, it’s the 72 acres [on the east half of Markham Hill] when you walk across the pasture, and get to the far side where the pasture ends, and the woods begins.’ Archer said.”
“’… and there’s actually a pretty good fence along there. There’s 72 acres to the east, which was a PZD, there was 72 acres to the west of that line which was not in a PZD, it was zoned (r4) 4 houses per acre by the city.’ Archer said.” [The 72 acres on the west half of Markham Hill, zoned RSF-4 at the time, consist of intact urban forest with a few running trails. Most of the 72-acre PZD on the east half of Markham Hill is also intact urban forest.]
“’We decided to sell those 72 acres [on the west] to raise the money to get the bank out of the picture, and we put it up for sale, and a number of people were interested, but the best bid came in from Specialized [SREG].’ Archer said. ‘So the best bid for the 72 r4 acres was from Specialized, we were going to sell that to them.’ Archer said.”
“Archer reiterated ‘Now, the purpose of all this was to get Simmons bank out of the picture. The sale price for those 72 acres was over a million dollars, that would have reduced our debt to Simmons bank dramatically, we still would have owed them some money, and we could have come up with it by selling something else’.”
“Archer added that [Specialized] said ‘they had investors who would put up the money to buy the [72-acre] PZD, pay off Simmons bank, completely out of the picture, and then they would refinance it for us (Julian Archer), we would then owe them 35 to 40% of what we owed to Simmons bank.’”
“’In other words, the sale of the land the 72 (r4) acres [on the west] would get rid of the bulk of our debt, and the investors would refinance the rest of what we owed.’ Archer said.”
“’That was the deal we had, it was an understanding, it was verbal, he (Seth Mims) swore to this under oath in federal court, on February 4th, 2016, he was going to keep it zoned as it was, and he swore to that under oath at federal bankruptcy court, so we believed that he [was] going to get his financers, pay off the bank, and sell the property back to us at that price which would refinance it.’ Archer said.”
“’What happened was, as soon as we sold the property to him, he went silent, and wouldn’t respond to a phone call, to visits, to emails, anything, and within one week he turned around and sold it to his investors.’ Archer said.”
“When asked if there was any unfinished business, Archer said ‘In addition to the furnishings of the inn which were purchased for business purposes, we have family items in there, paintings, awards, our piano, and the old farm implements on the walls in the barn. There’s a huge number of personal items that we stuck around for decorative purposes, and we’re trying to get those back.’”
“Archer added that their (SREG’s) lawyers said that they could have them back, but they are having difficulties with correspondence.”
“’One of the things that always strikes me, is the reported sale price of $3.1 million, that just seems like such a steal for all of that up there.’ [neighbor] Trey Marley said.”
“’The price was not determined by an appraisal, not by value, it was determined by the cost to get Simmons bank out of the picture.’ Archer said. Archer said they only wanted to get Simmons bank out of the picture, they would refinance, and they would have sold the 72 acres on the west side of the property zoned 4 units per acre voluntarily.”
“Archer said that normally in bankruptcy court, when a person files, they begin appraising whatever assets are to be sold. Archer said that they didn’t feel that was necessary in this case.”
“Archer said that the remainder owed on the property would have been roughly $800k, and they would refinance on a loan for that amount from SREG, the sale of the 72 acres [on the west] would have brought their debt down enough for them to be in good withstanding credit from the (Simmons) bank, he would have been left with $800k outstanding, SREG would finance it, and they would create a mortgage contract for the Archer’s to eventually own the [east 72-acre PZD] land containing the Inn, barn, and cottage.”
“Archer then elaborated how he felt this happened with Simmons bank. ‘When people get mortgages, most of the time they don’t hire lawyers to get their opinion on the clauses contained within the contracts. You can say I want to change this clause, and the wording of another clause, the bank drew up those papers, not you.’ Archer said. ‘You trust that the bank, [when] you make your mortgage payments, they subtract so much per month from the principal, they take the interest, they give you a statement of the interest, you figure that they’re doing things right, and you don’t worry about the clauses.’ Archer said. ‘You don’t go to bed at night reading your mortgage contract, no one does.’ Archer said. ‘We signed it and trusted the bank’ Archer said.”
“’There were some technical defaults on our part, yes we couldn’t dispute them, but a normal bank would say “oh, if you straighten this out in three months, we’ll ignore it”. That’s exactly what we had with Simmons, we met with officials, they said okay you can get this straightened out.’ Archer said. While they were working to reorganize and pay off Simmons, they didn’t know that the bank would end up declining their payment, Archer said. ‘At the end of three months, I went in with a check to the bank, and they said we won’t accept it. Here I am settling the dispute, and they refuse to take the payment.’ Archer said.”
“Archer said emotionally, the hardest part of this is behind him, ‘We lost everything in 2016, we lost my grandparents house, my parents house, our own house, we lost all that land, we don’t even set foot there.’ Archer said that they are still working to get their personal property there back.”
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Part 3 - Transcript of Seth Mim's testimony in federal court
Part 4 - Archer vs Bond lawsuit concerning lawyer malpractice
#SaveMarkhamHill #PreserveFayetteville #KeepFayettevilleForested #MarkhamHillHistory #MarkhamHillWildlife #MarkhamHillNativeAmericans #MarkhamHillInspiredArt #PreserveFayettevilleHistory