When our sons were young--they're 21 and 17 now--my wife and I sometimes would book a room at the Majestic Hotel in downtown Hot Springs and let them enjoy the hotel's big swimming pool and soda fountain. At night, we would walk a few blocks down Park Avenue in order to enjoy the Czech, German and Hungarian dishes prepared by chef Adolf Thum at the Bohemia.
Thum retired in 2007 and closed the restaurant. Two years later, the nondescript building saw new life when Fermin Martinez, a Mexico City native who received culinary training in Italy and France, opened what's now Park Avenue Bistro. It's one of the finest restaurants in the state.
After driving by the rubble that still remains in full view where the Majestic burned in late February, I walked into Park Avenue Bistro one evening last week. Sitting at a table against the front wall was Hot Springs financial adviser Robert Zunick, a native of the Texas panhandle who has been in Hot Springs since 1983. He's not one to draw attention to himself. But Zunick and a small group of his fellow visionaries might be among the most important economic developers in Arkansas right now. In their hands rests the economic revitalization of downtown Hot Springs, a city with one of the greatest concentrations of architecturally significant structures in the country.
Many of the city's historic structures fell into the hands of do-nothing landlords. Scavengers ripped out some buildings' ornate inside fixtures and sold them. We should be ashamed as Arkansans for what was allowed to happen in a city that once was among the nation's top resort destinations. Five months after the Majestic fire, though, there's progress to report. Indeed, there seems to be new life in the old gal that is downtown Hot Springs.
The first domino fell in early June when Ken Wheatley announced that he would sell two buildings across Central Avenue to a partnership composed of Zunick and veteran architects Bob Kempkes and Anthony Taylor. They hope to turn the Thompson Building, which was completed in 1913, into a 62-room boutique hotel. Even though it's directly across from Bathhouse Row, the building has been allowed to deteriorate to the point that small trees are growing out of the dirt collected on its ledges. The upper floors have been unoccupied for more than three decades.
Zunick, Kempkes and Taylor also hope to transform the nearby Dugan-Stuart Building, constructed in 1904, into either condominiums or apartments. The twin-tower building, which is five stories high, was built to house medical offices. Following our dinner, Zunick took me on a tour of the building, which has mosaic tile flooring, plaster moldings, stained hardwood trim and marble wainscots. The upper floors have been unoccupied for decades, but one can see the potential. Increasing the residential base is a key part of bringing life back to downtown.
If Zunick, Kempkes and Taylor are successful in attracting overnight guests to the Thompson Building and residents to the Dugan-Stuart Building, outside investors with even deeper pockets will realize the potential to make money and follow up with restoration projects of their own. Three weeks after plans were unveiled for the Thompson and Dugan-Stuart buildings, Pat and Ellen McCabe announced that they've entered into lease negotiations with the National Park Service to open a boutique hotel and restaurant in the Hale Bathhouse. If the McCabes are successful, there will be activity in seven of the eight bathhouses (all except the Maurice, a large building with tremendous redevelopment potential).
When Josie Fernandez, the superintendent of Hot Springs National Park, came to the city a decade ago, just two bathhouses were being used. Pat McCabe, the president of the 100-year-old Levi Hospital, also is running for mayor of Hot Springs. Zunick doesn't view the Hale as competition for the Thompson. He welcomes the plans for additional upscale rooms, saying they will create critical mass downtown. Pat McCabe feels the same way.
"We cannot be successful downtown in a vacuum," McCabe said. "We're only going to be successful if we're all bringing in tons of traffic. I really think downtown is going to blossom again. We're getting to a point where there's only one bathhouse that's empty, and the buildings across the street are now being developed."
Zunick's mother was from Pres-cott. Each summer, he would spend almost a month in Arkansas, splitting his time between Prescott and Hot Springs, where relatives had a house on Lake Hamilton. He entered college with the goal of becoming a pharmacist. By graduation, he was a musician instead. After playing in bands for several years, he wound up in Dallas in the book distribution business.
"My parents had retired to Hot Springs, and my wife and I had decided to retire here one day," he said. "We later decided that we shouldn't wait. We should enjoy this city while we were still young. We moved to Hot Springs three decades ago and have never regretted it. I'm not a real estate developer. Like everyone else here, I would look at the buildings downtown and dream about the possibilities. I had an opportunity to be involved and decided to seize it."
If all these efforts are successful--and there are no guarantees in real estate development--we might look back on 2014 as the year when a new golden era dawned for downtown Hot Springs.
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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 on 07/23/2014