Ken Wheatley stands in the parking lot he owns across from Bathhouse Row in downtown Hot Springs and talks about the future.
It has been almost half a century since a building was constructed across from the bathhouses, and Wheatley plans to change that. He will build a two-story facility adjacent to the Gangster Museum of America that will contain retail spaces on the first floor and Wheatley's home on the second floor. That's right, his home. The Wheatley family long has controlled much of the commercial space along this stretch of Central Avenue, and Wheatley believes the future is dependent on attracting more residents to the neighborhood. He's putting his money where his mouth is by selling his current home and moving downtown.
"We have 16 buildings with 30 tenants downtown," he says. "The retail spaces are all full. We're starting to see interest in people living downtown. If you drive up Park Avenue, you'll see all kinds of renovations being done. The younger residents like being able to walk or bike to work. It just seemed to be the right time for new construction. I hope it's the start of similar projects that will take place down here."
Downtown Hot Springs has experienced a remarkable revitalization in recent years, though large structures such as the Medical Arts Building, the Velda Rose Hotel and the Howe/DeSoto Hotel remain vacant and ripe for redevelopment. Wheatley believes Hot Springs is at a "once-in-a-lifetime" crossroads that won't come again. He's among those who favor turning the former site of the Majestic Hotel into a series of thermal pools, which he thinks will lead to additional development.
"Thermal pools will be a true destination that will bring people to Hot Springs throughout the year who would not come here otherwise," Wheatley says. "That will complement the other things going on. Maxwell Blade has remodeled the Malco Theatre and has a Vegas-quality magic show there. Businesses such as the Ohio Club are booming. This new building, with an almost 6,000-square-foot home atop it, will be viewed as another piece in the rebirth puzzle. We'll have three retail spaces on the first floor, and I already have commitments for leases. We've begun drilling the piers to support the structure. We're on our way."
Wheatley, who was trained as an engineer at the University of Arkansas, worked for about two decades in Texas before coming back to Hot Springs in 1991 to help manage the family properties. In 1993, he told an interviewer: "I came back to help my father do this. I'm really the fifth wheel for him to implement his dreams. I've got the dreams and ambitions. He has the experience to slow me down so I won't run off a cliff." In that Arkansas Business interview 24 years ago, Wheatley already was talking about the need for more residents downtown.
Wheatley's great-uncle was the legendary Hill Wheatley, who bought property downtown through the decades and put his name on buildings along Central Avenue. Hill Wheatley worked from a desk in the lobby of the Downtowner Motor Inn, which has gone by The Springs Hotel since 2006. Hill Wheatley, who manned his lobby desk daily until his late 90s, had only a grade-school education. He was known as being a tight-fisted businessman who would buy old buildings at a discount and then hang on to them for decades. Many Hot Springs residents believe the steady deterioration of the downtown business district occurred because Hill Wheatley wouldn't renovate the buildings he owned. Ken Wheatley, however, thinks a number of those historic buildings would have been torn down under other owners.
The Downtowner was constructed in the 1960s in the Modernist style of architecture. It was designed by the Little Rock firm Eichenbaum & Erhart. Construction began in 1963 when casino gambling was still wide open in the Spa City. Hill Wheatley committed $2 million to the project.
"It was part of a construction boom in Hot Springs during the early 1960s," Kelly Braxton writes for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "In 1964 alone, more than $24 million was spent on construction in the city. The building's site had previously been occupied by the Virginia Apartments and a Greek confectionery, which were torn down to make way for the new hotel. The Downtowner was designed by Little Rock architect Nolan Blass Jr. Blass had developed a name for himself by integrating art into his work. ... At the time of the Downtowner's construction, Blass worked for Eichenbaum & Erhart. Wheatley wanted his new hotel to have a progressive look. He had a special interest in the project as he and his family would occupy the 9,000-square-foot penthouse suite that covered the 10th floor. When it opened in 1965, the Hill Wheatley Downtowner Motor Inn was touted as a European beach hotel without the beach. The sleek 10-floor tower was set back from Central Avenue to allow maximum sunlight and a feeling of openness on the streetscape. With its signature redwood screens hanging on its exterior windows, it was a perfect example of Modernist architecture of the early 1960s. Its rooms came in five decor styles--English, Spanish, country French, contemporary and 'Oriental,' reinforcing the international image of the hotel."
Now more than 50 years later, Ken Wheatley is building his own contemporary-style building downtown. Like Hill Wheatley, he plans to move his family into his structure. Could it be the start of another downtown Hot Springs construction boom like that of the early 1960s?
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 12/27/2017