Stephen Bell moved to Arkadelphia about a month ago from Stuttgart to become the new president and CEO of the Arkadelphia Regional Economic Development Alliance and Area Chamber of Commerce.
Since arriving there, he has been meeting new people, learning about his new community and keeping busy with all its latest developments.
“I’ve been working hard with a number of new projects that have been started,” he said. “I’ve attended the Wal-Mart Manufacturing Summit in Denver. The retail giant is looking to invest $250 million to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. They are calling it re-shoring.”
Bell said local companies are growing in the area, such as the Georgia Pacific plant in the county that has announced an expansion. A new company, Hillstern Farm, formerly Vikon Poultry, will open soon at the former Petit Jean plant in the Clark County Industrial Park in Gum Springs. Hillstern Farm will process specialty chickens for markets in Asia.
“They are smaller chickens. … These will be 4 pounds,” Bell said, “but they will be leaving the heads and feet on these chickens.”
The intermodal terminal for transloading from rail to trucks is still in the works. Bell said the community is waiting for a $1 million grant that will complete the funding for the project that was first announced several years ago.
“This will be a good driver toward attracting industry to the area,” Bell said. “Raw materials can be brought in by rail and trucked to local manufacturers, while finished products can be trucked to the facility and sent out by rail.”
Big projects are also underway at Arkadelphia’s two universities. Bell cites the two new student-housing projects going up on the Henderson State University campus. Meanwhile, across the street at Ouachita Baptist University, the new home-side stands at Cliff Harris Stadium are complete. The face-lift for the stadium, which was dedicated in honor of Harris on Saturday night at the Tigers’ season opener, includes updated stadium seating, a new press box, a parking lot and related improvements.
OBU officials have also announced that the Ben M. Elrod Center for Family & Community will be housed in a new building on campus.
“You can always look to the universities for something new,” Bell said.
Bell took over the Arkadelphia alliance after 18 years with the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce, where he was also involved in attracting new businesses and jobs to Arkansas County. In Arkadelphia, he said, he has more tools to work with and a community looking for change.
“I think the vote on the economic-development tax that passed with over 70 percent of the vote showed the entire community is committed to economic development,” Bell said. “Clark also recently became a wet county, which has attracted restaurants, and they will then help attract people who can bring business and industry to the community.
“It all shows the people are progressive and want to grow. Eric Hughes and Dr. Lewis Shepherd are a new generation of leadership for growth with new ideas and a new way of thinking about things. I am part of that.”
Among Bell’s tools for development are the city’s two institutions for higher learning.
“Few communities this size have two great four-year universities,” he said. “That makes an impression when you are recruiting for industry. Then we have the interstate, DeGray Lake, several major banks, and four foundations call Arkadelphia home.”
Bell said those attractions are all tools that bring in industry and brought him to the area.
“I told the board I’ve been pretty successful in Arkansas County, but I kind of feel like I’ve been driving a pickup truck,” he said. “With the economic development over here, I feel like I’m driving a Ferrari.”
In Stuttgart, along with the chamber of commerce, Bell led the area’s industrial-development organization. He said manufacturing is making a comeback in America.
“We want to see our businesses and jobs grow in a diversity of ways,” he said, “but I’m still strong on manufacturing.”
Bell said he heard at the Wal-Mart summit that the lower costs of energy and rising labor costs in Asian industrial centers were causing many companies to leave the Orient and return home to the U.S.
“We have had success by looking at the manufacturers we have and then attracting their suppliers,” Bell said. “That anchors the manufacturers into our community, and they are less likely to be persuaded to move out.”
He said the economic-development groups can then look for other manufacturers who would use those suppliers or partner with the manufacturers already in the area.
“We want to create industry clusters,” Bell said. “I feel that’s our best strategy.”
Bell was born in Canada and entered school in Ireland.
“My father was in the Foreign Agriculture Service with the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” Bell said. “He taught modern farming techniques to local farmers and worked on building international trade for American agricultural products. He helped negotiate the first grain sale to the Soviet Union.”
Bell was in elementary school when his family returned to the U.S. With his father a government official, the family lived near Washington, D.C., first in Virginia and then in Maryland. They came to Arkansas when Bell was 14. He graduated from Stuttgart High School.
“My father was in the Nixon administration and left the government soon after the president,” Bell said. “[My father] helped create some legislation on rice that changed the industry. Having grown up on a farm in Illinois, he wanted to move to a small town in an agricultural area, and we moved to Stuttgart.”
Bell said he never planned to live in Arkansas County, but he kept returning there, twice to work for the local newspaper, then to direct the chamber of commerce.
“With the passage of the economic-development tax this year, I guess we have a seven-year plan to use the tax dollars to attract jobs and grow the community,” Bell said. “Clark County had an unemployment rate of 2.6 percent sometime in the 1990s. It’s happened in the past, and we can definitely get back there.”
He said that housing remains an issue in attracting new business, but homes are selling, and residential building is up. Expanding already established businesses will be a major target.
“Around 70 percent of the growth we have seen is expansion or suppliers moving in, so we just start looking for new prospects,” Bell said. “We have a great staff here, and I want to get the word out that I work for the industries looking to come into this community. If they need local incentives, I’m there for them.
“Clark County has a good record for job growth, and Arkadelphia is a great town that has positioned itself for growth. I would not have come here if I didn’t think the area had a bright future.”
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.