Upgraded cafeteria's return feeds appetite for politics at state Capitol

Customers, including Billy Bolin (left) and Cory Lynch, eat lunch Thursday in the newly renovated 500 Grill in the basement of the state Capitol.
Customers, including Billy Bolin (left) and Cory Lynch, eat lunch Thursday in the newly renovated 500 Grill in the basement of the state Capitol.

At the center of politics in Arkansas is a cafeteria in the basement.

For legislative deals to get done, Democrats to meet Republicans, and lobbyists to advocate for their clients, it's helpful to have a place to eat in the state Capitol.

But for the past three months, the eatery was shut down for renovation and repair.

The breakfast and lunch spot reopened Thursday after more than $1.2 million was spent to update the space and jackhammer through the floor to replace cast-iron sewer lines.

"Pretty," was how Rep. Brandt Smith, R-Jonesboro, described the restaurant as he sat down across a table from Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council, to discuss a human-trafficking bill.

Cox, eating a hamburger and french fries, said the burger was excellent. Staff made it in front of him. The fries were average. The room was more breathable and spacious than before the renovation, he said.

He pointed to the "cool kid" table -- a round table in the corner -- and said some things never change. It's the table where veteran lobbyists can be seen, often with some lawmakers and state officials.

Mark Johnson, a consultant and chairman of the Pulaski County Republican Committee, sitting with Cox and Smith, said his greens weren't quite right.

"You don't put garlic in greens," he told passers-by. The fried chicken, however, was good.

"I've been coming up here since childhood," Johnson said. "I mean when I was born, my dad was a senator, so I've literally been coming here my whole life."

He turned to Cox.

"Did you know my dad proposed to my mother in a taxi over there in the side parking lot by the Senate?" he said.

A few tables over, Veronica Hebard, a math specialist with the Arkansas Department of Education, took a bite of her chicken sandwich and proclaimed it better than Chick-fil-A.

And, at $4, she said it was a good deal.

She sat with Sherri Thorne and Michele Snyder -- both also with the Department of Education -- and said they had been going to the cafeteria for years and missed it while it was out of operation.

The group said they appreciated some of the healthier options.

Auditor Andrea Lea walked past them and said the new room was "light, airy, clean and spacious."

"When this place closed, we all stopped seeing each other," she said. "This is where you often run into other people in Capitol -- while getting breakfast or lunch. I'm seeing people I haven't seen in months."

In the center of the cafeteria, Kelly Boyd, chief deputy secretary of state, surveyed the space.

"All that old stuff had to come out" because of the sewer problems, he said, pointing to the kitchen. "We had to go under and through walls, so we just gutted it completely out."

The new space has more tables. A private room was removed to make a larger space. There's bar-style seating on the perimeter of the space where users will be able to charge laptops and phones.

Another change is the management.

Boyd informed Pam Kirchner in a letter dated March 31 that the secretary of state's office was terminating its contract with her for operation and management of the Capitol cafeteria, effective June 30.

At the time, Kirchner said her family operated the Capitol cafeteria for 38 years and she has worked there full time for 25 years.

Boyd had said he wasn't dissatisfied with Kirchner's operation of the cafeteria, but it was "time to make a change."

The cafeteria is now managed by the secretary of state's office.

"I can take this place -- all the money we make [on] it -- and I can put it back into it," Boyd said Thursday.

The cafeteria has been around since the Capitol's basement was finished in the late 1940s to make room for state offices, said Capitol Historian David Ware, who works for the secretary of state's office.

When the floor was jackhammered through earlier this year, workers found a mule shoe left when mule-drawn scrapers excavated the space around 1900. They also found broken bricks, possibly from the penitentiary buildings that formerly occupied the Capitol grounds. The building was constructed between 1899 and 1915 using prison labor, according to the secretary of state's website.

"You probably have an amenity like this somewhere in the basement or in some corner of most state Capitols ... run because there's an expectation that you're here to do your job -- elected or civil service -- and you're not supposed to be gallivanting off to the country club for lunch," Ware said of the need for a place to sit and eat. "Either bring your packed lunch or go to the cafeteria, get your tray, finish your food and get back to work. That's not a bad thing."

In 1964, the cafeteria was the site of a battle over desegregation.

Civil-rights leader Ozell Sutton stopped by the secretary of state's office to pick up maps and voter registration rolls for the Arkansas Voter Project. He went down to the basement to have lunch, was refused service and was asked to leave, according to an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly by University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor John Kirk.

The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 had become law two weeks earlier.

Less than a week after Sutton was kicked out, the cafeteria incorporated as a private club in an attempt to exclude black patrons.

"There were attempts to physically desegregate it. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members tried to do that. There were rioters in the hallways here. You had segregationists here," Ware said. "I heard the story first from Howard Himmelbaum. He died a few years ago, but he was on [former Gov.] Mike Beebe's staff. Howard was one of the SNCC volunteers who'd come down here and he had been burned by mustard gas thrown by one of the counterprotesters."

Eventually, a court action held that black patrons could not be excluded under the pretense of running a private club.

In terms of legislative deals brokered in the basement: "If I knew and told you, they'd have to kill us both. I'm sure there are. Ever since I've been here, there's been a big table in one corner where legislators would get together and talk over early breakfast," Ware said. "There are some institutions you don't mess with and some you do. The coffee for instance -- much better."

Metro on 09/11/2017

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