Pryor Center Prepares For Move

History Hub Among New Uses Planned For Downtown Square

FAYETTEVILLE — Their bags aren’t packed yet, but Pryor Center employees are getting ready to set up shop in the mostly vacant building on the east side of the square.

The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History will move temporarily into second-story offices in the East Square Plaza building this summer, according to Mike Johnson, the University of Arkansas’ assistant vice chancellor for facilities. Johnson said it will then take up to 90 days to rewire and furnish the center’s permanent home in the basement and ground floor.

“I would hope that we have the Pryor Center in a permanent space before the end of 2013,” Johnson said.

The center, a repository for hundreds of historical interviews with various Arkansas personalities, has been tucked away for years on the fourth floor of Mullins Library on campus.

“One of the Pryor Center’s primary goals is to make its collection of audio and video interviews and images available to the public,” Chancellor David Gearhart said in a prepared statement. “Its new home on the Fayetteville square will be a major step in that direction: raising the visibility of the center and making it an integral part of downtown.”

At A Glance

Pryor Center

The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History has recorded or collected hundreds of interviews with people who have lived in and influenced its history. The center was established in 1999 using unspent campaign money donated to the University of Arkansas by former U.S. Sen. David Pryor.

Featured interviews include:

• Jim Blair, former general counsel, Tyson Foods

• Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States

• Alta Faubus, first wife of former Gov. Orval Faubus

• John Paul Hammerschmidt, former U.S. Congressman

• E. Lynn Harris, New York Times best-selling author

• Dale Hawkins, singer/songwriter

• Gordon Morgan, first black professor at the University of Arkansas

• Sonny Payne, host, “King Biscuit Time” blues radio show

• Rodney Slater, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation

• Floyd Thomas, former FBI agent and Ku Klux Klan investigator

The Pryor Center’s collection also includes oral histories of the Arkansas State Police, the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat newspapers and former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. The center recently acquired decades worth of video archives from Little Rock ABC affiliate KATV. The archives include footage from the 1939 Hope Watermelon Festival and 1957 standoff between former Gov. Orval Faubus and supporters of racial integration at Central High School in Little Rock.

For more information, or to review interviews, go to pryorcenter.uark.edu.

Source: The Pryor Center

East Square Plaza opened as a First National Bank building in 1981. It housed a series of banks, including a Bank of America branch, before developers Ted Belden, Rob Merry-ship, Richard Alexander and John Nock purchased it in 2005, renovated it and opened the space for commercial tenants in 2008. Belden acquired the building from his partners in 2009 and provided space in its basement for Fayetteville Underground artists. The collective moved out in late 2011 after Belden decided to stop discounting the group’s rent. The basement has been empty since. Most of the building’s ground floor has sat vacant even longer.

Randy Dixon, Pryor Center director, envisions sound booths in the ground floor bank vault where people can walk in, interview a family member or longtime Arkansas resident and post their recording to the center’s archives. Historic photos and videos also could be displayed, but most of the space will be reserved for offices, editing bays and storage.

“It’s going to be very much a working space,” said Dixon, who was hired in January after a 31-year career with KATV in Little Rock.

Belden called the new use for the building a “win-win” for him and the university. It will give the center a more visible location and will give Belden money needed to pay down debt associated with a 2007 loan from the Bank of Fayetteville.

The university’s Board of Trustees agreed in November to pay Belden $2.7 million for nearly 70,000 square feet in the basement, and on the first and second floors of the 106,000-square-foot building. The space far exceeds the roughly 2,500 square feet the Pryor Center occupies in Mullins Library.

Johnson said the Community Design Center, an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture, will move into the ground level, but probably not until summer or fall 2014. Johnson said leftover space could be used for other university functions, including studio or exhibition space for fine arts students, or it could be leased to private businesses. The design center has created a plan for a street car system on College Avenue and is working on an Arts District design plan for an area near the Walton Arts Center.

Johnson said the Pryor Center’s space in Mullins Library will revert to the library when the center moves out. The university will likely discontinue a lease with owners of the building where the Community Design Center is located at 104 N. East Avenue.

The university assumed ownership of its portion of the building Dec. 31. Belden’s company, One East Center, retained third-floor office space and two of the six condominiums on the building’s top floor, according to Washington County property records. The other condos are privately held. Tess Gibbs retained ownership of her boutique home furnishings store, Corazon, and an adjoining space where the Kieklak Law Firm is based. The university took over leases with Savoir-Faire, Brick House Kitchen and several second-floor offices, including Carlton Realty.

Dale Carlton, principal broker for the company, said he was happy the university extended his lease for another year.

“They’re a major contributor to the community and will definitely bring new life and activity to a building that’s probably one of the more architecturally unique buildings in Fayetteville,” Carlton said. His downtown office is good for meeting with clients and walking to lunch. Parking can be difficult, but more and more people in town are realizing that walking a few blocks isn’t that big of a deal, Carlton said.

An expanding farmers’ market and successful events like First Thursday and the Block Street Block Party also make the square a good place to be, Carlton said.

Tess Gibbs said there was no question in her mind about where to locate when she opened Corazon in 2010.

“To me, the square is just the epitome of Fayetteville,” Gibbs said. “It’s Old Main, and it’s the square.”

Gibbs said she expects to sell more merchandise after the Pryor Center moves in, a trend that would build upon several positive months since the Chancellor Hotel opened on East Avenue in September.

Steve Clark, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, also viewed the move as a boon for the local economy.

Clark said, despite being exempt from property taxes as a university-owned space, the Pryor Center will draw genealogists, historians and political scholars from across the state. Those visitors will shop and dine in Fayetteville, Clark said. The Community Design Center, he added, is likely to bring in policymakers, academics and others who are interested in designing 21st Century communities.

“This is a real plus on both fronts,” Clark said. “We couldn’t be more excited about it.”

With new activity in the East Square Plaza building, all four sides of the downtown square will be occupied. The Old Post Office building, in the center of the square, remains empty, however. The last tenant in the nearly 102-year-old structure, Urban Table Bar & Grill, left in January 2009. Ron Bumpass, the building’s owner, is marketing the property for $1.3 million.

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