I've finished speaking to the Rotary Club of Jonesboro in the St. Bernards Medical Center auditorium and am now looking at what's known as Centennial Plaza.
On Aug. 1, 1919, 25 young businessmen met at the Hotel Noble in downtown Jonesboro to establish the world's 520th Rotary Club. The club's members decided to celebrate their 100th anniversary last year by developing an outdoor venue that could house downtown events. The project transformed what had been a dilapidated piece of property into a well-used plaza adjacent to the historic Forum Theater. The plaza has hosted everything from festivals to movies to concerts to weddings. A replica of the entrance to the Hotel Noble, which hosted the Rotary Club until the 1950s, was part of the design for this versatile venue.
The person who invited me to speak, Ruth Hawkins, knows a lot about creating places that attract visitors and improve the quality of life. Before retiring from Arkansas State University last year, Hawkins was largely responsible for the heritage sites that ASU operates across the Arkansas Delta--places such as the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center at Piggott, the Johnny Cash boyhood home at Dyess, the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum at Tyronza and the Lakeport Plantation near Lake Village.
Jonesboro is blessed because it's in the only strong growth area in east Arkansas. In fact, there are only three multi-county growth areas statewide--northwest Arkansas, the Little Rock metropolitan area and the Jonesboro-to-Paragould corridor encompassing Craighead and Greene counties. While some Delta counties now have less than half the population they had in the 1950 census, Jonesboro has seen its population more than quadruple from 16,310 in 1950 to 76,000 today.
What happened? For decades, those living in the northeast quadrant of Arkansas gravitated toward Memphis. They went to the doctor there, attended concerts there and shopped there. Now, they go to Jonesboro to do such things. For most of the 20th century, they read Memphis newspapers, watched Memphis television stations and listened to Memphis radio stations. They now read the Jonesboro newspaper, watch Jonesboro television stations and listen to Jonesboro radio stations. Jonesboro became a regional center in the truest sense of the word, the very thing Pine Bluff failed to achieve down in southeast Arkansas.
As recently as the 1990s, Pine Bluff had a larger population than Jonesboro. Pine Bluff had 57,140 residents in the 1990 census, and Jonesboro had 46,535. Pine Bluff's population is down to 42,000 and falling.
In addition to becoming a regional trade and medical center, Jonesboro took advantage of low utility rates to become a hub for the food-processing industry.
With just three growth areas in the state, it's essential to all Arkansans that Jonesboro continue to do well. I salute the fact that the city has a core group of business and civic leaders--many of them young--who are trying to take the next step. They realize that they must improve the quality of life in the city for growth to continue. They must provide the kinds of things graduates of Arkansas State University need in order to stay in Jonesboro following graduation and start businesses. This is no time for complacency. Their main challenge going forward is a virulent northeast Arkansas strain of Tea Party types who oppose any type of public investment.
Most Arkansans, not realizing the strength of the Tea Party crowd, were surprised last September when Jonesboro voters rejected a proposed one-cent sales tax increase. Because of the growth, they had thought of Jonesboro as a progressive place with residents who were willing to invest in the city. That turned out not to be the case.
The tax proposal had been unveiled last May by a group called Team Jonesboro. The tax would have brought in $18 million a year and sunset in 12 years. Quality-of-life projects included bike trails, sidewalks and an aquatic center. There also would have been new fire stations and police substations.
The good news is that members of Team Jonesboro say they'll still try to find ways to fund needed amenities. In the words of Scott McDaniel: "Team Jonesboro is a movement, not a moment."
Rotary Club members expressed to me their concern that the current economic success will lead to Jonesboro residents resting on their laurels. They look to northwest Arkansas and see things such as Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Momentary and the Razorback Greenway. They look to Little Rock and see the $70 million renovation of the Robinson Center and the $128 million expansion of the Arkansas Arts Center.
After touring Centennial Park, I walk into the Forum, which served as the Strand Theater for decades before being sold to the city of Jonesboro in the 1970s and undergoing a renovation. A group known as the Foundation of Arts is housed in the Forum and the adjoining Arts Education Center on Main Street. The Forum hosts 11 community theater presentations per year (Disney's Newsies is being presented on the day I visit) and dozens of arts classes.
The Forum and Centennial Park provide a foundation for downtown. Now what's needed in this neighborhood are more chef-driven restaurants, live music venues, craft breweries, loft apartments, art galleries and independent bookstores. For the kind of young, talented people that Jonesboro hopes to attract, rows of chain restaurants and big-box stores along Red Wolf Boulevard will no longer cut it.
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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 03/11/2020