06/23/2025
I posted this to my personal account last week, but I figured it would be worth posting here too.
I understand that eminent domain is sometimes necessary.
I understand that we can’t fight eminent domain. We can only fight about the compensation we receive.
But we shouldn’t have to.
What is NOT necessary is the Arkansas Department of Transportation (and Universal Field Services as their proxy) coming in and ruining people’s lives without a thought or care.
Some context…
I first found out that we are in the “construction zone” for the Highway 112 expansion in December 2022. I happened to go to an ARDOT meeting at the Mount Comfort Church of Christ at the recommendation of a neighbor. I was curious about how the project was going to affect us getting to and from our place. The guy running the big digital map pulled up our property and said “Oh yeah, you’re gonna be relocated”. I was in shock.
They called over a rep from ARDOT to talk to me. She had obviously done a lot of calming people down already. She painted a rosy picture about the whole thing, how the state was going to take care of us, how this would be a good thing for us. She said ARDOT was going to move fast on this project, and we’d probably be moving in six months.
The next time we heard ANYTHING from anybody was almost two years later. Again, someone (this time from Universal Field Services) came over and painted another rosy picture about how they were going to help us through this, how this was going to be a good thing for us, that we would get to improve our situation.
A few weeks later, she and another person from Universal came back to give us the “offer” for our property. It was a completely different attitude that time. I’d say they were doing a “good cop/bad cop” routine, but neither one was really playing the “good cop”.
The initial offer they gave us for our property was insulting. It was about half of what we needed to get a comparable place. And it was accompanied by veiled threats that, yeah, we COULD try to negotiate, but getting a better offer for the property would just mean the money would come out of other relocation funds, so it wouldn’t help. And they tried to scare us with potential tax ramifications of doing that.
Anyone who has been here has an idea of the layout. We have our home, the studio, multiple outbuildings for storage and my pottery studio, and all of it surrounded my woods on about three acres of land just outside the city limits. We’ve lived here for 25 years, and I’ve run East Hall Recording here for 20 years. It’s not fancy, but it works great for the life we live.
The one “comparable” property they used to justify their offer was a joke. They at least managed to find a house with similar square footage. Beyond that though, it was on a lot the size of a postage stamp… in a subdivision… in the city limits… with an HOA!
And THAT’S what they used to determine the value of OUR property! Even if there was room to put a studio on a lot like that, studios make noise. There’s no way that would fly.
So, we were forced to hire a lawyer to fight the valuation. We submitted a counteroffer to ARDOT/Universal. Smart or not, we tried to negotiate in good faith. We didn’t counter with something 50% over what we need with the intention of coming down. We countered with what we ACTUALLY NEED.
After sitting on it for almost a month, they came back with a counteroffer almost as insulting as their initial offer, because they know they can. They hold all the cards. If this were a regular purchase, we’d have some leverage. We could say “no deal” and find another buyer. We can’t do that here. We have no choice but to sell, and they get to dictate not just the price, but whether they even accept our arguments as valid. I’ll let you guess how that goes.
This isn’t a real negotiation. We’re just begging, and not even directly from ARDOT. We only have contact with Universal. They say they negotiate on our behalf, but they’re hired by ARDOT. We’re NOT who they answer to.
Short of putting this in front of a jury, ARDOT is the judge, jury, and whatever else they decide to be.
I know how this works. I’ve seen it before. Screw over some of the people for the sake of “progress”. It’s only a matter of time before they’re forgotten and everyone else can enjoy a new road and their bonuses at ARDOT for saving a few bucks. We’ll all disappear to live out our miserable lives wishing for what we once had.
This is not the way things should be. If the state is going to take people’s homes and businesses, the people should at least be made whole. None of us need to get rich off the deal, but everyone that gets kicked out of their homes should walk away saying “ARDOT at least treated us right, and we can continue our lives as unobstructed as possible”.
TL;DR We’re losing our property, home, and studio, and the state is in the process of screwing us over.
Chris Moore
