After 18 years, an Arkansas mayor is packing up, moving out

After 18 years at helm, he lists revised downtown, parks among accomplishments

Conway Mayor Tab Townsell has seen the city grow from 36,000 residents to roughly 64,000 during his years in office.
Conway Mayor Tab Townsell has seen the city grow from 36,000 residents to roughly 64,000 during his years in office.

CONWAY -- A table in Mayor Tab Townsell's office holds stacks of books, pictures and other items.

Among them is a picture of him with his now 11-year-old daughter, Riley. "Daddy Daughter Date Night '11," it says. There also rests a Bible that was a high-school graduation gift, a small ink-pen collection, and books -- many books -- some offering ideas on urban life, others shelved nearby and offering glimpses into world history.

For the past few years, Townsell has kept his book collection in his City Hall office. Now, after almost two decades as mayor of rapidly growing Conway, he's turning the job and the office over to his successor, former Conway Fire Chief Bart Castleberry, who takes over Sunday.

Townsell was 36 when he first ran for office in 1998. He's 55 now. A special census in 1996 counted 36,000 residents in Conway. Now, roughly 64,000 people call Conway home.

His next job will pose new challenges, some dealing with the same long-range planning he has faced as mayor. In January, he starts as executive director of Metroplan, central Arkansas' long-range transportation-planning agency. He also plans to move to Sherwood, where his fiancee lives.

He owns -- and reads -- volumes upon volumes of books bound in leather, edged in gilt and replete with historical accounts of countries and their people. In one book are letters from an "amorous" Thomas Jefferson, including one he wrote to a French woman, Townsell related. In that letter, Jefferson wrote about a debate between his head and his heart. There also are Napoleon Bonaparte's memoirs compiled by his private secretary. And there's a small copy of the U.S. Constitution.

To anyone who's talked extensively with Townsell, the books help explain his occasional literary and historical allusions in conversation, whether he's talking about city business or politics.

Townsell said the hardest parts of his job have included firings and zoning decisions. But his reading reminds him that he is just one person who has contributed to the city's history, and he doesn't get all of the credit or all of the blame.

Indeed, in ancient times, he noted, Roman generals had slaves riding behind them in the chariots during victory parades.

Townsell said the slaves would remind the generals: "You are just a human."

His proudest accomplishments include the makeover of downtown Conway; the use of traffic medians and traffic circles, also known as roundabouts; and the city's park system.

Dave Ward Drive, which runs east to west, has effectively used medians to provide safety benefits and to facilitate the movement of traffic.

The city opened its first traffic circle near Hendrix College in 2004. Now, the city has 19 traffic circles with three more under construction -- "by far" the most of any Arkansas city, Townsell said.

The traffic circles help keep vehicles moving rather than stopping at red lights. Even some of the circles' biggest skeptics now like them. Like the medians, they also provide a place for landscaping. Sunflowers adorned the center of one circle along Siebenmorgen Lane this summer.

When Townsell took office, the city had no boys baseball park, no girls softball field, no city-run soccer field and no special-needs parks. And, he said, the city had "no money" to make those things possible. Baseball was played at the former Faulkner County fairgrounds site then.

Under Townsell's administration, the city adopted streets-and-parks impact fees, levied one time on new commercial and residential building projects. Only home residents pay the park impact fee.

Then in 2006, the city approved a 2 percent prepared-food tax with seven-eighths of it going to parks.

"That's what is generating real substantial money for parks," Townsell said.

Now, the city has a nine-field baseball complex and a five-field complex for girls softball. The city also runs the formerly privately financed soccer field. In addition to improving other parks, the city has expanded a pedestrian trail and has a ball field and a playground for special-needs children.

In 1999, the city's downtown was what Townsell calls "wobbly." Old businesses were closing and were too often replaced with short-lived businesses. Back then, sparrows roosted in the area's many Bradford pear trees and left their droppings behind. Today, the downtown landscape features crepe myrtles, where sparrows don't roost, rather than Bradford pear trees.

The city first redeveloped Front Street, where City Hall and numerous businesses are located; updated the water, sewer and power systems downtown; and added landscaping. "We created a beautiful space," Townsell said.

"Once we invested in the streets ... building owners started investing more" in their own property, he said. Among successful businesses now downtown are EM Jeans, Old Chicago, JJ's Grill, Pasta Grill and Mike's Place.

Townsell said his biggest regrets are that the city has not built a public swimming pool as part of an aquatic center and that the city still doesn't have public transit.

He noted that the public-transit issue was on the City Council's agenda on the same night that the aldermen had to deal with a financial crisis. A bookkeeping error had left the city's general revenue fund with millions of dollars less than what local officials had thought the city had, resulting in significant budget cuts.

The timing was so bad, Townsell recalled, that the Metroplan representative who discussed the transit proposal with aldermen that night remarked, "I can't believe I'm presenting that tonight."

Still, Townsell hopes the city will add public transit eventually.

He also believes that an aquatic center is essential, especially when businesses are considering moving to Conway.

"We are by far the largest city in Arkansas without a public pool," he said. "There's no good reason for us to be without a public pool. It raises questions when we don't have one."

Alderman David Grimes praised Townsell's leadership and foresight.

"In my opinion, Tab's greatest strength as mayor was that when it was time to listen, he listened, and when it was time to lead, he led."

Grimes said Townsell accomplished a lot as mayor.

"One of the main reasons I ran for city council when I did was so that I could serve alongside him," Grimes said in an email. "I knew Tab had a grand, progressive vision for Conway, and I wanted to be a part of that.

"As for his greatest accomplishment," Grimes said, "I think the most lasting, and visible, of his accomplishments are the street infrastructure expansions and improvements, specifically the roundabouts. Those will forever have a lasting impact on Conway's transportation flow."

State Desk on 12/30/2016

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