For Melton Cotton

Greenbrier center renamed for former mayor

The Greenbrier City Event Center has been renamed the Melton Cotton City Event Center to honor the city’s longtime mayor. The signs had not been changed as of Thursday. Shellie O’Quinn, the center’s director, said she found out about the name change when she attended a Greenbrier City Council meeting in December. Personally, O’Quinn said, she likes the ring of a name like the Cotton Community Complex.
The Greenbrier City Event Center has been renamed the Melton Cotton City Event Center to honor the city’s longtime mayor. The signs had not been changed as of Thursday. Shellie O’Quinn, the center’s director, said she found out about the name change when she attended a Greenbrier City Council meeting in December. Personally, O’Quinn said, she likes the ring of a name like the Cotton Community Complex.

Quick, what’s the name of the facility in Greenbrier where people go to exercise or hold events?

Well, it depends on whom you ask.

When it was built in 2005, it was named the Greenbrier City Event Center. Last month, the Greenbrier City Council

renamed the building the Melton Cotton City Event Center to honor the city’s longtime mayor, who retired Jan. 1.

New Mayor Sammy Joe Hartwick said he has called the facility the City Event Center, but Greenbrier Police Chief Gene Earnhart wanted to rename it.

“It was put that way to honor Melton because he was instrumental in getting that building built,” Hartwick said. “[The City Council] thought that would be a nice

gesture, which it was.”

“The reason we did it,” Earnhart said, “was that he was mayor for 27 years and everything, and really, when he first came up with approving it to be built, we tried to get him to do it then. He wouldn’t have nothing to do with it. … He wasn’t that kind of mayor.”

Earnhart, who has been on the police force for 24 years and chief for the past 12, said that when he heard Cotton was retiring, he talked to all the City Council members about changing the event center’s name to honor Cotton.

“They all jumped on board with it,” Earnhart said. “We did it his last council meeting. We kind of surprised him with it. He couldn’t say no then.” It was unanimously approved.

Earnhart said with a laugh that he has called the building “the Event Center when I was thinking, ‘the Sports Center,’ when I wasn’t thinking.”

Dean Strickland, who has been on the Greenbrier City Council for about 20 years, said he likes the new name.

“Calling something the Event Center, it just says something, but it doesn’t say a lot. Since we’ve named it Cotton, it’s a whole lot different. People look at it and respect it a little more,” he said. Strickland said that’s the feedback he has been receiving from residents.

Prior to the new name, “I don’t remember when it first started, what I called it,” Strickland said, “probably just something about a center.”

Shellie O’Quinn, the facility’s director since April 2005, said the name has been confusing since the beginning. The center opened June 30, 2005, so it was almost finished when she arrived.

“I said, ‘OK, Greenbrier City Event Center is really redundant and really long,’” she said. O’Quinn said she didn’t see the need for both Greenbrier and City in the name. The logic, she said, was that the area in which it was built is called The City Center. She said “there’s a little sign” erected in that area.

In a press release in the River Valley & Ozark Edition the day the center opened, it was called City Event Center.

She recalled a discussion in which city officials said they didn’t want it called The Sports Center because of the Conway Sports Center.

“All the kids call it the sports center, and the adults, too. Not a single person calls it The City Event Center. It’s just funny,” O’Quinn said. “My preference is just to call it The Center and be done with it. We do sports, and we do community events.”

According to a more recent press release from O’Quinn, the facility houses two full-size basketball courts, volleyball courts, pickleball courts, a one-ninth-mile padded walking track and a fitness room. A variety of group exercise classes are offered daily for every age, ability and lifestyle, and free personal-training consultations are available by appointment, thanks to a grant from the Arkansas Coalition on Obesity Prevention. The building was the site of a health fair last week.

The $2.25 million facility was funded through sales-tax revenue and was two years in the making, according to an article in the River Valley & Ozark Edition.

In newspaper advertising, O’Quinn has used the full name — Greenbrier City Event Center. When groups send out press releases, it sometimes is written incorrectly as “events,” plural.

As of Wednesday, she hadn’t been directed to purchase a sign to reflect the center’s new name. Earnhart said Hartwick would take care of having the lettering done inside, and a new sign would be made for the outside of the building.

“I’m fine with the name,” O’Quinn said. “[Cotton is] so laid-back and humble. I’m happy it’s named for him. I just don’t want it to be confusing for the public.”

She said that occasionally, people show up at the Conway Sports Center, which is in the Don Owen Recreation Complex, when they should be at the former Greenbrier City Event Center, or they come to Greenbrier when they mean to go to the Conway Sports Center.

As for Cotton, he said he isn’t too impressed by having a building named for him.

“They haven’t got it changed, yet. I built it. It’s kind of an honor, I guess, but I don’t care a whole lot about my name being printed around.”

Well, he can call it whatever he wants to.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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