Fifteen months after its restoration was finished, Sherwood's historic Roundtop Filling Station remains vacant, waiting to be used as a police substation.
The former Roundtop Filling Station, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, is on a small, triangular piece of land where Trammel Road meets Roundtop Drive just west of Arkansas 161. It was restored using $128,000 in state Historic Preservation Restoration Grants, in addition to funds from the city, the Sherwood Chamber of Commerce and private contributors.
The station, built in 1936, is on a former section of U.S. 67 and is said to have been a popular stop between Little Rock and St. Louis. Arkansas 161 was part of U.S. 67 until the early 1960s when the present-day U.S. 67 was built about 11/2 miles west of the site.
The opening of the police substation has stalled over the cost of adding sewer services, Sherwood Mayor Virginia Young said Wednesday. The city is now waiting on written approval from the A̶r̶k̶a̶n̶s̶a̶s̶ ̶H̶i̶g̶h̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶T̶r̶a̶n̶s̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶D̶e̶p̶a̶r̶t̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ state Health Department* to add a holding tank at one-tenth of the expense of installing a sewer line, Young said.
"Money for the holding tank was put into the 2016 [city] budget," Young said. "It will cost $3,000 to do that, and we can't finish the landscaping until we put in the holding tank. That would not make sense.
"It was going to cost $30,000 for there to be regular sewer service," she said. "A sewer line would have had to go under the street and would be pretty expensive. Spending $30,000 is quite a bit for that sized project."
A sign outside the station labels the building, with its distinctive red, inverted-cone-shaped roof, as "Sherwood Police Substation" with the city's logo in the center and the words "Historic Roundtop Filling Station" also included. A plaque on the building denotes the site as the "South Substation," rehabilitated in 2014.
The nearly $200,000 restoration was the initial project of the Sherwood History and Heritage Commission that formed in 2013. The property was donated to the city in 1999. Restoration was completed in January 2015, after a Nov. 2, 2014, fire from suspected arson damaged its stucco and concrete walls.
Darrell Brown, who until recently was the commission's chairman and had overseen the Roundtop's restoration, said Wednesday that the building is being neglected. He called the city's delay "heartbreaking" because of the attention from state preservationists and the community support that the restoration received.
The small patches of grass on the property appeared to have been freshly trimmed Wednesday afternoon and the grounds were clean.
"The city just won't finish the project," Brown said, adding that the station originally contained a septic tank. "It's very sad and very heartbreaking. It also makes me pretty angry, not just for me, but for the hundreds of people and businesses who donated to it."
The Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas placed the Roundtop on its list of "most endangered places" for 2013, giving the project an urgency and needed publicity. The state awarded grants of $50,000 for the first phase of the restoration and $78,000 for the second phase. Paving bricks also were sold for $100 each that would include the donor's name, but they haven't been put into place, Brown said.
"I've had a lot of people call me and ask where are our bricks," Brown said. "I had really hoped the city would embrace it and use it as a tourist attraction and not just as a substation. You'd think the city leaders would take this [attention] and run with it. It's mind-blowing."
Young said Brown is no longer the city's "go-to person" for the project and isn't authorized to speak for the city. The city's plans for the Roundtop haven't changed, she said.
"It's not going to be a full-time utilized building anyway," Young said. "It never was intended to be that. It is still in our plans."
Metro on 04/07/2016
*CORRECTION: Sherwood is awaiting written authorization from the state Health Department for a sewage holding tank to complete renovations at the historic Roundtop Filling Station in Sherwood. This article misstated the agency that would authorize the holding tank.