David’s Burgers slaughterhouse near Jacksonville returns to Pulaski County planners Tuesday

LITTLE ROCK — A cattle slaughter and processing plant proposed by the owner of the David’s Burgers restaurant chain is back on the Pulaski County Planning Board’s agenda Tuesday, a month after the board deferred it over missing road and wastewater approvals.

The item, listed as “Request for Site Plan Approval – Anchor/David’s Burgers Processing Facility,” is under old business on the agenda for the 2 p.m. meeting in the Quorum Court chambers at the county administration building, 201 S. Broadway. The county has posted a Zoom link for the meeting.

The meeting packet shows the company’s engineer, Rickett Moriconi Engineering of Little Rock, resubmitted the site plan Oct. 1 with preliminary plans to widen Southeastern Avenue along the property, a revised grading plan with a 2,500-cubic-foot stormwater detention pond, and a plan for extending water and sewer mains to the site.

The letter does not say the company has the sewer and health approvals the board asked about. Instead it says requirements of Jacksonville Water, Jacksonville Wastewater Utility, the Arkansas Department of Health and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality “will be met prior to permitting and/or certificate of occupancy.” The packet also includes an alternative preliminary septic system plan “in lieu of connecting to the municipal sanitary sewer system.”

The plan is the second attempt by David Alan Bubbus Jr., whose family runs the nine-restaurant chain and the David’s Premium Beef steak business, to open his own slaughterhouse. He withdrew an application for a plant at the company’s North Little Rock warehouse in February 2025 after neighbors objected.

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What is proposed

The site is listed by the county as about 75 acres at 2003 Old Military Road, at the southwest corner of Military Road and Southeastern Avenue, just outside Jacksonville city limits in unincorporated Pulaski County. A land title survey in the packet puts the tract at 78.1 acres, with Bayou Meto along its southern edge and gas pipeline easements crossing it. Housing inside the city sits across the street and on the opposite corner, the trade publication Meatingplace reported.

The applicant has not yet bought the land. The survey lists the owners of record as Jack and Michelle Anderson and was prepared for Anchor Realty Investments LLC, the “Anchor” in the agenda listing. The engineer’s letter says right of way for the road widening “cannot be dedicated until the property is purchased by the applicant” and that the dedication would happen before permitting.

The site utility plan, dated Oct. 1 and stamped preliminary, shows a 7,875-square-foot processing building 26 feet tall, with 15 parking spaces, a grease trap and a sanitary sewer line running to a manhole on Southeastern Avenue. The building sits well back from the road, with a 500-foot buffer drawn on the county’s agenda map.

That is larger than the figure Jacksonville’s economic development director, Robert Birch, gave KTHV in September, when he described a 6,700-square-foot, fully enclosed and refrigerated plant representing an investment of more than $2 million. The city signed a letter of support for the project.

The turn lane plan calls for a 12-foot through lane, a 12-by-150-foot left turn lane with a 180-foot deceleration taper at the site entrance on Southeastern, and a 5-foot crushed gravel path along the full property frontage.

Bubbus told the board Sept. 22 the plant would handle about 10 head of cattle a week for the restaurants and the steak wholesale business, with no more than 50 cattle on the property at one time, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. He said he did not expect the plant to process more than 25 a week in his lifetime. News reports on the application have put its stated maximum capacity at 50 to 60 head a week.

The company says slaughter would happen indoors under daily U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection. Blood and byproducts would be sealed in refrigerated 55-gallon drums and hauled to a rendering plant in another county. Kala Strickland, the company’s vice president of site services, told KTHV the rendering “is not happening on site in Jacksonville.”

Bubbus has said the current landowner has kept about 70 cattle on the property without odor complaints. “What causes the smells is the density of cattle, we will not have that problem,” he told KATV.

Longer term, the company has described a farm, employee training classrooms, pasture for horses and a corporate event center for employees and their families on the land.

Why the board deferred

The board did not vote the project up or down on Sept. 22. It postponed the request until the company produces a plan to widen the nearby road, including accommodations for pedestrians and cyclists, and Arkansas Department of Health approval of its wastewater pretreatment process, the Democrat-Gazette reported. KATV reported the board also wants sign-off from Jacksonville Wastewater on sewer discharge from the site.

Bubbus told the board he would return the next month with the requirements met. He said the company had spent about $200,000 on planning and studies and that the finished project would cost millions.

The Oct. 1 resubmittal answers the road condition with preliminary widening and drainage plans. On wastewater, it commits to meeting agency requirements before a building permit or certificate of occupancy rather than showing an approval in hand. The packet contains no staff recommendation.

[COMMENT NEEDED: Pulaski County Planning and Development, interim director Jim Cranor, 501-340-8260 — does staff consider the wastewater condition satisfied by the engineer’s commitment, or does the board want the ADH approval before a vote? Is staff recommending approval?]

[COMMENT NEEDED: Jacksonville Wastewater Utility — has the company applied for a discharge or pretreatment agreement? Would the utility accept slaughterhouse wastewater at that location?]

No zoning, so no veto

Pulaski County has no zoning in its unincorporated areas. James Walden, who leads urban planning for the engineering firm Garver, told the board the county’s regulations are “agnostic” to land use as long as a project meets the subdivision and development code, the Democrat-Gazette reported. The county land use plan Garver completed last year is not binding, he said.

Walden also said site plan applications do not require public notice under county rules. Several neighbors said they learned of the plant on Facebook rather than by letter.

Bubbus told the board that County Judge Barry Hyde had told him he would have use of the land “by right” if he met site plan requirements.

The same meeting includes a 2 p.m. public hearing on a proposed amendment to the subdivision and development code that would set development standards for data centers in unincorporated areas, an example of the tool the county does have: adding standards to the development code rather than zoning.

The opposition

About 10 people spoke against the plant Sept. 22, among them Wendell Griffen, the Democratic nominee for county judge in the Nov. 3 election. Griffen, who defeated Hyde in the March primary, called the project a “noxious, smelly, commercial-grade slaughterhouse” that would be a nuisance and lower property values, the Democrat-Gazette reported. He faces Republican Michael Rushin.

Justice of the Peace Patricia Young-Baker, D-North Little Rock, whose District 10 includes the site according to the county’s agenda map, said the plant is industrial development in a residential area and that she was not notified of the meetings.

Meaghan Fernau, who lives about 0.3 miles from the site and started a petition against it, pressed the company for evidence. “If odor is not going to affect the neighboring homes, provide the independent analysis of the pathogen testing,” she told the board, according to KATV.

Bubbus said residents had been misled, in part by news coverage. “Everybody is upset about things that are not true,” he said, according to the Democrat-Gazette. He invited critics to tour the slaughterhouses the company currently buys from and said his own children would spend time on the property.

[COMMENT NEEDED: Alan Bubbus / David’s Burgers — has the company met the board’s conditions? Does the 10-a-week start and 50-to-60 ceiling still stand?]

Why the company wants its own plant

David’s Burgers was founded in Conway in 2010 by David Bubbus Sr. and his son. The company grinds about 15,000 pounds of beef a week at its North Little Rock facility, which cuts USDA Choice chuck from cattle bought from a Texas rancher and slaughtered under contract in Searcy, Arkansas Money & Politics reported in February 2025. At that time the company was sending about 20 animals a week through the Searcy plant.

Alan Bubbus told the magazine the push to control slaughter began when beef prices spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I didn’t want to build our business to where it relied upon the beef industry,” he said.

The North Little Rock proposal, filed in 2024, sought a special use permit for a plant at 1600 Gregory St. in the Dark Hollow area, where the warehouse’s I-2 industrial zoning required planning commission approval for a slaughterhouse. The plan called for up to 50 head of cattle a week. After neighbors organized against it, the company offered a 5,000-square-foot holding barn in place of an outdoor pen, then withdrew the application in February 2025 when the city said it could not amend the pending request.

If the Pulaski County board approves the site plan Tuesday, the plant would still need USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service grant of inspection before it could slaughter cattle for sale.