Renewed interest gives Helena-West Helena hope

On a stretch of Cherry Street in downtown Helena-West Helena, new developments take shape among abandoned buildings. Renewed interest in the city is making community leaders cautiously optimistic about the city and its schools.
On a stretch of Cherry Street in downtown Helena-West Helena, new developments take shape among abandoned buildings. Renewed interest in the city is making community leaders cautiously optimistic about the city and its schools.

HELENA-WEST HELENA -- Renewed industrial interest in Helena-West Helena's Mississippi River harbor -- and people taking a chance on its ailing downtown strip -- have generated hope among some that the future of this 12,000-person city will be better than its recent past.

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The brightest source of optimism for Helena-West Helena is the Helena Harbor, which is trying to first attract smaller employers in what John Edwards, the harbor’s economic development director, calls a “crawl-walk-run process.”

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This building, a block off Cherry Street in downtown Helena-West Helena, recently collapsed. But young professionals and creative entrepreneurs are investing along Cherry Street. “You can live quite well” in the area, said nonprofit planner Terrance Clark, an Illinois native. “You can make a good salary.You can save money.You can get involved in civic life in ways you never could in Little Rock.”

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A worker refurbishes a building on Cherry Street on Thursday.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of Helena-West Helena.

Even if that's so, community leaders caution, it will be a long slog.

"There are positive things happening here, but we didn't get to where we are overnight, and we're not going to get out of this overnight," said Jimbo Boyd, regional CEO of Southern Bancorp.

For decades, people have been leaving Phillips County, resulting in a 53 percent drop in population between 1960 and 2010. That decline is tied to the loss of jobs, which has created many impoverished families, neglected properties and public services strained to their limits.

Helena-West Helena's school district, struggling to adapt to its student enrollment falling with each passing year, will emerge from state control Dec. 12. Since 2005, the Arkansas Department of Education has twice stepped in and taken over the financially distressed district.

On Dec. 12, the district's new leaders will face challenges that have changed over the past decade as the district essentially has shrunk by half what it was previously.

"If some of the economic development possibilities that I've been hearing about in that community ... if those come to fruition, then I think you're going to start seeing some improvement reflected in the school system," said state Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who served as the school board while the district was under state control.

The brightest source of optimism, according to people throughout the community, is the prospects at the Helena Harbor, which is drawing inquiries after years of its inability to attract industrial projects that were expected when the channel was completed in the 1990s, an official said.

On 4,000 available acres along the 2.5-mile waterway off the river are just three tenants who collectively employ roughly 80 people, said John Edwards, the harbor's economic development director since 2014.

Harbor officials have a new strategy -- recruit several smaller businesses rather than focusing on one or two big ones -- and new messaging at a time when industrial water supply is becoming a more prominent factor in what businesses seek in a potential site, Edwards said.

"We're sitting here on the future gold mine," said Clark Hall, who in January will become Phillips County's first new county judge in 20 years. "We have the water. We have the resources."

The harbor's goal is to attract smaller employers because that's what its infrastructure is suited to support and because a failed small business won't have as great an impact on the community as a failed large one would.

"It would give us time to build up, what I call kind of the crawl-walk-run process," Edwards said. "It would give us time to really have some managed growth."

Harbor tenant Enviro Tech, which employs close to 60 people in the production of liquid chemicals to clean food-service equipment, plans to expand and create 20-40 new jobs, Edwards said.

The company opened in March 2015.

A Houston-based company plans a 60-acre solar farm in Helena-West Helena to sell energy to the region's power companies or cooperatives. It would create only a handful of jobs but would yield public revenue that Edwards said is needed to address the city's blight.

Two other companies, which Edwards said he could not elaborate about, are planning projects that would create 50-150 jobs, he said.

"We are dealing with prospects that have the financial force, power and the management ability to make these [projects] happen," Edwards said.

Meanwhile, young professionals and creative entrepreneurs have invested downtown along Cherry Street, another factor that's fueling business leaders' renewed optimism.

Terrance Clark, co-founder of the nonprofit Thrive Center, assists small businesses with marketing, strategic planning and design from a downtown office in Helena-West Helena. Clark, an Illinois native, sees advantages to living in the city. He estimated that his monthly cost of living is about $500, for example.

"You'll meet a lot of organizations and whatnot trying to dwell on the negativity of this area, but there is tremendous opportunity," Clark said. "You can live quite well. You can make a good salary. You can save money. You can get involved in civic life in ways you never could in Little Rock."

Chuck Davis of Little Rock, a former business development specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration, spent about $600,000 to buy and remodel adjoining Cherry Street buildings. He lives there now with his wife.

"I've had my friends say, 'Chuck, you're absolutely nuts to put 10 cents in Helena,'" said Davis, who in a few sentences can chart out how the vacant Nicholas Hotel across the street might one day be reanimated.

The town's merits or struggles depend on perspective, said Davis, who also sees opportunity in the Mississippi River. Davis is trying to line up a business to harvest Asian carp, a nuisance fish, from Helena-West Helena and export it to Asian markets, where people eat that species. Davis said he's been in talks with potential partners and thinks the project would create hundreds of jobs.

Yet, the slow pace of progress may test the resolve of early investors in a town that lacks diverse food and entertainment options -- there is no movie theater or mall, for example. And the town has been slow to reward the chances some entrepreneurs have taken there.

John Mohead, a well-traveled musician, opened his restaurant Southbound in downtown Helena-West Helena a year ago, moving from Mississippi.

He said he was drawn to the city's "picturesque" locale near the Mississippi River, amid patches of 19th-century architecture, where blues was born and where Crowley's Ridge melds with the Delta plains.

"Tourists love" the city, Mohead said from his restaurant on Cherry Street, near the main music stage where the internationally renowned King Biscuit Blues Festival is held each year. "This place has more potential than anything I've seen."

A few blocks away, a building sits in collapsed ruin. Other downtown buildings are standing but vacant.

Mohead said he expected to struggle when he bet on the tattered small town, but he didn't foresee how difficult it would be to attract people to the downtown part of Helena, even from the West Helena portion, much less nearby towns like Lexa and Marvell.

Asked if he could continue with the restaurant, Mohead said, "It's a struggle."

"I think, quite frankly, a lot of locals have written off downtown," Mohead said. "But to me, it's a piece of clay. It's one of those things where nobody else wants it, you get it, and you can form it into what you want it to be."

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