Repaired resort reopens: Sunterra
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/230539/
HARDY — After fugitive developer Wayne Watkins fled to Mexico nearly two years ago, his Spring River Beach Club fell into disrepair and closed after more than 20 years of operation.
It’s now re-opened under new management, with a new name and no obvious affiliation with Watkins.
That nonaffiliation extends to the lifetime Beach Club memberships for which some property owners paid Watkins thousands of dollars. Those folks will have to pay admission, says Terry Houltzhouser, manager of what is now called Sunterra.
Houltzhouser said he decided to lease the Beach Club, clean parts of it up and turn it into something for everyone after driving by the shuttered property last year.
“This used to be beautiful property,” Houltzhouser remembered. “This is all about Mother Nature.”
When he started working on the resort three weeks ago, the pool closest to the office was filled with brown water. Grass in some places had grown so high it was taller than Houltzhouser, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall.
Now, tiki torches and colorful striped umbrellas outline the pool, which the Health Department allowed to open last week. Instead of weeds, bright yellow flags mark the holes at the miniature golf course.
A few of the faded Beach Club signs have been replaced by royal blue Sunterra signs, and a “Grand Opening” banner hangs at the street entrance.
Watkins lost hundreds of acres of Sharp County land to foreclosure after defaulting on more than $ 2. 6 million in loans, but available court records show he retained ownership of the Beach Club office, recreation center and miniature golf course.
Records show the properties were owned by Spring River Beach Club, which Watkins headed as president.
In December 2006, Watkins gave his power of attorney to his cousin, Virgil Griffin. Last year, Griffin used that power of attorney to deed the Beach Club office, recreation center and miniature golf course to himself.
Houltzhouser is leasing those items, along with camping spots, the lake and other parts of the Beach Club from Griffin, said Cheryl Ward, a real estate agent who brokered the lease agreement. Griffin declined to comment for this story.
Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel last month sued Griffin, Watkins and two Watkins business associates over allegations that they violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by engaging in “a concerted scheme to knowingly deceive both consumer purchasers and banks.”
Many of Watkins’ customers lost their money and the land they thought they owned when he defaulted on his loans.
Ward, whose office overlooks the former Beach Club, said this Sharp County community wants to move away from the negative stories about Watkins and focus on the positive.
“The people of the community are really happy because [the new manager ] has cleaned it back up,” Ward said. “He just wants this thing good again. He said it made him sick driving through it.”
With Sunterra, Houltzhouser hopes to give the Beach Club a new life, free of scandal and controversy.
But that may not be possible.
Sunterra will not honor lifetime Beach Club membership contracts. Some bought the memberships when they purchased land from Watkins years ago.
Houltzhouser said he doesn’t know about any contracts that included membership benefits. He’s simply making a fresh start for a new business at a wellknown location.
“It’s not the Beach Club,” Houltzhouser explained. “The people who owned this or whatever they did here, I never met any of those people.”
The people with lifetime memberships were promised free use of Beach Club amenities while property owners at nearby Riverbend Park (a camper facility ) and other properties developed by Watkins were promised access if they paid annual assessments.
Now, they’ll have to pay $ 5 a day or $ 200 a year like anyone else, Houltzhouser said.
“We’re supposed to have access to all that,” said Retha Ladyman of Paragould. Retha and her husband, Donald, paid nearly $ 2, 000 for a lifetime membership when they purchased property at Riverbend Park for an additional $ 7, 000.
The couple continued to pay annual assessments, which climbed to $ 600, until the park manager refused to give them a recorded deed to their property in 2007.
“They just kept putting us off,” she complained.
A pool and bathhouse at Riverbend Park were included in a foreclosure lawsuit filed by Bank of Salem earlier this year.
Other portions of the Beach Club were included in a Heritage Bank foreclosure finalized in November.
Houltzhouser said he did not know much about Watkins’ legal troubles, but believes people in the community want the kind of recreational facility that the Beach Club once offered.
“I don’t know about all the suits and stuff, but if they ever get all the deeds cleaned up on it, I’d buy it,” he said. “I’ve not run into any opposition from anyone.”
Asked about the possibility of foreclosure or losing the property to someone else, Houltzhouser said, “That’s a risk you take.”
Houltzhouser, who lived in Hardy for about 12 years before moving to Missouri in the 1990 s, said he’d been wanting to return to Arkansas and decided that fixing up the old club was the perfect project to keep him busy.
He signed a lease agreement, which essentially allows him to operate the property in exchange for cleaning it up, Houltzhouser said.
“We still have a lot of cleaning to do, but we’re trying.”