Reprinted from Arkansas Democrat Gazette, December 30, 2023:
Article by John Lynch
Heifer Project International filed a lawsuit Friday over the failed sale of its Little Rock headquarters for a planned Lyon College institute housing schools of dentistry and veterinary medicine.
The hunger-fighting charity filed the suit to claim about $550,000 left over from the unsuccessful sale and to force the failed buyer to pay unspecified damages for not completing the purchase, which Heifer claims is a breach of contract.
The plan — as described when the sale was announced in May 2022 — was for Arkansas health care provider OneHealth to buy Heifer’s downtown campus to house the Batesville liberal arts school’s pending dentistry and veterinary schools while leasing office space back to Heifer.
The plan was touted for more than a year as a significant development for downtown that would also provide an economic shot-in-the arm for the community.
The purchase price for the Heifer campus was not disclosed then, and it’s been scrubbed from the pleadings in the litigation.
The cash is the leftovers of the $750,000 earnest money put up by OneHealth as a deposit against the sale. Heifer has already collected the other $200,000 due to OneHealth twice pushing back the closing date, according to Heifer court filings.
The litigation began Friday when Standard Abstract & Title Co., which has been holding the earnest money, petitioned Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox to allow Standard to deposit the money with the court while OneHealth and Heifer work out which one is entitled to the money.
About an hour later, Heifer responded by filing its claim to the money, disputing that OneHealth has any right to the funds, and its suit against OneHealth alleging breach of contract.
The suit shows excerpts of email correspondence between Heifer’s chief financial officer Marcia Rasmussen and OneHealth’s co-founder and chief executive officer Merritt Dake on Nov. 3, three days before the closing date.
“We are prepared to close the transaction as described in the purchase and sale agreement. We’ve not seen much movement from your team over the last few weeks in connection with closing. We’ve also not received responses to our or the title company’s inquiries regarding closing. Do let us know, by close of business today, your intentions regarding closing,” Rasmussen wrote.
Dake described OneHealth’s reasons for being unable to complete the purchase.
“For the reasons we discussed on our recent call, primarily the need to shore up construction financing in a commercial real estate lending market that has turned decidedly unfavorable, and related to that, the request for a single tenant triple net lease with a sublease to Heifer, we are not going to be able to close on November 8th,” Dake stated.
Dake declined to comment when reached by phone Friday night.
The Little Rock-based OneHealth describes its work on its web site as assisting health care providers with capital, finding office space and technology to help manage patient care and payment, while also supporting “the launch of highly innovative & efficient professional healthcare programs.”
The litigation shows Heifer’s 28-acre property and 94,000 square feet of office space was to be purchased by a OneHealth affiliate, OneHealth East Village Development LLC, which was incorporated about two weeks before the sale was announced. It’s another OneHealth affiliate, OneHealth Education Group, established in February 2022, that has partnered with Lyon to establish its veterinary and dental schools.
In November, Lyon president Melissa Taverner said the college still wants to put the schools in Little Rock. The college’s stated plan has been to start classes in late summer or early fall 2025. She did not return a voicemail Friday night.
Lyon has been approved to offer Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Doctor of Medical Dentistry professional degrees and has hired its first dean for its dental school and a founding dean for the veterinary school.
