Mountain Pine Struggling Two Years After Plant Shuts Down

Mountain Pine Mayor Frank Babb was recovering from shoulder surgery when he received the call late on Nov. 28, 2006: Weyerhaeuser Co. was closing the mill that had operated in his Garland County town since the 1920s.

Babb, who also worked at the plant, said he couldn't get the report confirmed, but the company scheduled a meeting for 6 a.m. the next day.

"They just more or less called a meeting and told the folks that they had 15 minutes to get their stuff and get off the property," Babb said. "A lot of people just went into shock. I believe 85 percent of the [340] workers had been with the company 25 years [or more]."

Since then, the town of 722 northwest of Hot Springs has been paralyzed.

Weyerhaeuser hasn't decided what it's going to do with its Mountain Pine property, which includes the approximately 300 acres that the mill sat on and the pine forest that surrounds the city. And until Weyerhaeuser releases the property, the city can't move forward.

"We have our back against the wall," Babb said. "They are not going to turn loose [the property] at the moment, so we have no means to attract any kind of business to Mountain Pine."

Weyerhaeuser spokesman Richard Chapman said a decision hasn't been made about the future of the company's property in Mountain Pine.

Ken Myers, who resigned last week as city manager for Hot Springs, said that he had spoken to Weyerhaeuser officials, according to a Nov. 14 e-mail sent to Garland County Judge Larry Williams and other Hot Springs officials and released to Arkansas Business."The property in Mountain Pine is not available and they are not marketing this property at this time," Myers wrote. "They have some environmental issues that have to be resolved before the property can be offered for sale or donation."

The land could attract another industry because it already has a rail connection, said Stephanie Johnson, manager of market development for Arkansas Midland Railroad of Malvern, which operates the rail lines into Mountain Pine.

She also said there's not a lot of property available in the Garland County area that's large enough for a manufacturing plant. But she hasn't been pushing the site to potential companies, though.

"It's hard to sell something that's not technically for sale," she said.

Meanwhile, the city of Mountain Pine is trying to figure out how to manage its budget. Weyerhaeuser razed the mill, leaving concrete slabs and a few concrete pillars surrounded by a chain-link fence, and slashing the property's taxable value.

Babb said Weyerhaeuser was the city's largest water user, which accounted for $100,000 in annual revenue. The company also paid about $40,000 a year in city taxes. Weyerhaeuser, then, generated almost a third of the city's annual budget of $450,000.

The city currently has six employees, but Babb says the city may not be able to keep them all on the payroll.

[  ]