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Bass Cat Boats will bring 100 workers to Mountain Home in July to fully renovate the Serenity women’s shelter, with the company covering the entire cost of the two-week project.
Cody Blair of Bass Cat announced the plan Wednesday during the city’s monthly leadership roundtable at the Mountain Home Community and Aquatic Center. The renovation is being run in coordination with Bass Cat’s Orlando-based parent company.
About 20 of the workers will come from Bass Cat’s Mountain Home plant. The other 80 will travel in from sister companies elsewhere in the country.
“We’re going to completely renovate Serenity,” Blair said. “It’s going to take about two weeks. We’re going to put the full bill of the renovation. Just something that we’re doing to give back to the community and really important to us.”
Bass Cat will also cover room and board for Serenity residents during the project.
Blair estimated the total cost between $200,000 and $300,000. The figure includes lodging and meals for the 100 workers coming in from out of state and all renovation materials.
Blair described the parent company as a Christian, faith-based organization that runs an annual service trip across its roughly 1,900 employees nationwide. Bass Cat is one of several companies under that umbrella, and Blair said ownership picked Serenity as this year’s project through a selection process.
“Giving back to the community is a big part of what we do,” Blair said. “Our owners do a service trip every year.”
Serenity Inc. operates the Mountain Home women’s domestic abuse shelter, providing emergency housing, counseling and advocacy for survivors of domestic violence in the region. The nonprofit, which uses the tagline “Love Shouldn’t Hurt,” has been a fixture of north central Arkansas social services for years.
Dina, the business development and community coordinator for First Community Bank, confirmed the project at the same roundtable in her capacity as a Serenity board member.
“As a board member of Serenity, we are so excited for that project,” she said. “The girls are just ecstatic at the office. Very needed, and we are very much looking forward to it.”
Bass Cat Boats has built bass boats in Mountain Home for three decades and is one of the city’s larger private employers, with about 170 workers on the local payroll. Founded by Rick Pierce in 1994, the company produces roughly 1,100 boats a year and ships to dealers across the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia. Professional anglers fishing out of Bass Cat boats include reigning Bassmaster Angler of the Year John Cox.
Blair has stepped into a more public role for the company over the past several months, including a featured speaker slot at the chamber’s State of the City and County Breakfast in November.
Blair told the roundtable that the renovation is part of a broader pattern he has observed in Mountain Home since taking on more community work.
“Through my experience the last couple months, I am so impressed with this community,” Blair said. “Just from being a part of the chamber and what they do in the city and the county, and seeing how all these different organizations work so closely together. We really have something special here.”
The project is scheduled to run for roughly two weeks in July.
