Podiatrist's Purchase of Convention Center Gives Texarkana Officials Cold Feet

A Texas podiatrist with a past that includes a federal conviction wants to buy the troubled Arkansas Convention Center & Holiday Inn out of bankruptcy — and that has some Texarkana officials on the Arkansas side concerned. City officials say they haven’t heard from Dr. James J. Naples about his plans for the convention center. In December, Naples entered into a $6.6 million purchase agreement with Dr. Hiren Patel, who owns the property through his Texarkana Hotels LLC. The sale ultimately would have to be approved by the bankruptcy court. “We are as much in the dark as you are,” Ruth Penney-Bell, mayor of Texarkana, Arkansas, told Arkansas Business. “I have never heard of his having any experience in this sort of thing, not even being a hotel or motel” operator. She said the city has invested more than $9 million in the convention center project, which opened in 2013, about a year after a convention center opened on the Texas side of the city. Penney-Bell said the city has no voice in the convention center’s operation. Several messages left at Naples’ medical office in Texarkana, Texas, drew no response. Messages and emails to the attorney representing Naples in the purchase, Kyle B. Davis of New Boston, Texas, also brought no response. Naples, who has practiced podiatry for more than four decades on the Texas side of Texarkana, also is known for buying properties in financial distress, according to an Arkansan who was in bu...
Source: Arkansas Business - Health Care - Category: American Health Source Type: news