Tale of two cities

It’s a tale of two downtowns headed in opposite directions.

In Bentonville last week, word spread quickly that Matt McClure, the chef at The Hive in the 21c Museum Hotel, had been named a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in the South. A Beard Award is to the food industry what an Oscar is to the movie industry, a Tony is to the theater world or a Pulitzer is to journalism.

There has been no end to the good news coming out of Bentonville since the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened Nov. 11, 2011. Crystal Bridges is destined to transform this corner of the state into a nationally recognized cultural destination. More hotels along the lines of 21c, more restaurants along the lines of The Hive, boutiques, spas and art galleries will follow.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bentonville will become an Aspen without the snow, a place where wealthy, highly educated people spend lots of money. It’s quite a transformation from the days of my youth when the primary tourist attraction in the Arkansas Ozarks was Dogpatch.

Meanwhile in Hot Springs, they began boarding up the windows on the carcass of the Majestic Hotel. The hotel that anchored one end of Central Avenue for more than a century closed in 2006, and the buildings have steadily deteriorated in the past eight years. The original yellow brick structure was built in the 1890s. As Hot Springs boomed as a spa, the larger red brick structure was added in 1926. The Lanai Tower completed the complex in 1963 at a time when casino gambling, while technically illegal, was wide open.

Now visitors to downtown Hot Springs will be greeted by boards on the windows of one of the largest buildings, a scene more reminiscent of Detroit than the place that was Vegas before there was a Las Vegas.

Back up in Bentonville, quality restaurants like Table Mesa Bistro, Tavola Trattoria and Tusk & Trotter thrive downtown. Crystal Bridges has received rave reviews in publications worldwide. So has 21c, which mixes art exhibitions, a bar, a restaurant and hotel rooms. Last fall, TripAdvisor, the world’s most popular online travel site, ranked 21c Bentonville first in the United States and fourth in the world on its Hot New Hotels list. Who could have imagined that the hottest new hotel in the country would be in Arkansas? Earlier in the year, Travel + Leisure magazine had placed the 21c on its 2013 “It List of Best New Hotels.”

In a “what’s in and what’s out” list at the end of 2012, the Washington Post said the dining scene at Bentonville was “in.” And a website operated by Southern Living ran an article under this headline: “Is Bentonville The South’s Next Cultural Mecca?”

“Bentonville is a big city with a small-town mask on it,” McClure said in that article. “It’s pretty incredible how the downtown square has transformed. The local economy brings in a lot of transplants from around the country. You can’t swing a bat without hitting a Harvard MBA.”

All Arkansans should take pride in what’s happening in suddenly chic Bentonville. It’s good for the state.By the same token, Arkansans in every county should be concerned by what’s happening at Hot Springs. For decades, downtown Hot Springs personified Arkansas for thousands of out-of-state visitors.

There are some positive things happening downtown with the addition of art galleries in recent decades and the National Park Service’s heroic efforts to restore and lease the once-shuttered bathhouses. Overall, though, downtown Hot Springs has been in decline for more than four decades while growth occurred to the south along Arkansas 7 from Oaklawn Park to Lake Hamilton.

What was happening downtown was the elephant in the room that we didn’t mention. Now Arkansans can no longer ignore that elephant. As the anchor in the city that for now remains the state’s No. 1 tourist attraction, the land on which the Majestic sits is one of the most important pieces of real estate in Arkansas. Finding the best use for it and other empty buildings in the city’s historic core should be as big a priority for the governor’s office, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and other state agencies as landing a steel mill in Mississippi County.

You see, what’s occurring in the Spa City is an Arkansas problem, not merely a Garland County problem. That stretch of Central Avenue is so iconic that what happens there during the next decade will help determine what others think of Arkansas and how we think of ourselves. Great things will come from the Bentonville boom, but this state’s image will be undercut if something isn’t done about downtown Hot Springs.

The silver lining for now is that Hot Springs is less than a five-hour drive from one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, Dallas-Fort Worth. It’s time for state economic development officials to make a strong, sustained effort to attract Texas-based investors to downtown Hot Springs.

I grew up just down the road from Hot Springs. I love the city, its history, its mix of high-brow and low-brow, its attractions and its colorful characters. I’m convinced that smart mixed-use developments combining condominiums, boutique hotel rooms, dining, spas and upscale shopping can pay dividends for investors.

The boards are up. The symbolism is unmistakable. It’s time to make downtown Hot Springs a statewide priority before it’s too late.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 02/26/2014

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