Cars circled the block, looking for a parking place on an unseasonably warm Thursday night in downtown Pine Bluff. Downtown isn't normally a place where one finds a traffic jam after 5 p.m., but this day was different. Hundreds of people were streaming toward the Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas to learn about a new strategic plan known as Go Forward Pine Bluff. As those arriving late walked across the lawn of the center, a man loudly announced: "The fire marshal has already closed the doors."
Indeed, no one was being allowed in the auditorium. Bob Purvis, who will retire in March after 18 years as executive director of the Pine Bluff Advertising and Tourist Promotion Commission and the Pine Bluff Convention Center, was the first person I saw as I walked into the lobby. He said: "There are at least 400 people inside the auditorium. They're standing along every wall. There already are more than 100 waiting outside." Those waiting showed no signs of leaving.
In November 2015, a coalition of Pine Bluff civic, government and business leaders announced a multi-year, grass-roots effort designed to grow the city's tax base. The planning effort was funded by Simmons First National Corp. through a donation to the Simmons First Foundation (full disclosure: I work for Simmons). George Makris Jr., the Simmons chairman and chief executive officer, said at the time: "We're hopeful that the Go Forward Pine Bluff process will help pinpoint how to direct our efforts most effectively." The planning effort was led by Tommy May, the former Simmons CEO who now heads the Simmons Foundation; Mary Pringos, who is heavily involved in agriculture; and Carla Martin, an administrator at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
Pringos said back in November 2015: "It's time for a comprehensive strategic plan that will guide this city into the next decade. For the plan to be successful, all sectors of the community must be involved in the planning process. What we don't want is a report that will sit on a shelf and gather dust. The objective is to produce a plan that the community buys into, one that establishes clear, measurable goals and has concrete steps for achieving those goals."
Pringos, May and Martin underestimated just how much interest there would be in the process. Pringos recently told this newspaper's Chris Bahn: "We had twice as many people as I expected. And the number of people under 40 shows that they understand this is their future we're talking about here. We didn't need to sit back and wait another 30 years to see what else goes wrong."
Interest in the planning process shows that young people haven't given up on the idea of stemming population loss, improving the quality of life and expanding the tax base. As the regional capital of southeast Arkansas, it's vital to the entire quadrant of the state that Pine Bluff do well. One of the plan's recommendations is the development of a municipal master plan that includes land use regulations, city codes, planning requirements, zoning laws and enforcement options. The most recent such master plan was adopted in 1976. Other recommendations include establishing a land bank to acquire and manage foreclosed and abandoned properties; finding new uses for downtown blocks that house empty, decaying buildings; establishing a multipurpose center for meetings and recreational uses; establishing an institute to recruit and train Pine Bluff residents to run for public office; creating an educational alliance to improve the quality of education in the city's three school districts; and establishing an innovation hub to assist entrepreneurs.
As a south Arkansas native, I'm old enough to remember when Pine Bluff was the place to go for concerts and sports events. The Pine Bluff Convention Center was new, Barton Coliseum in Little Rock was showing its age and what's now Verizon Arena in North Little Rock was years away from being completed. I was at the Pine Bluff Convention Center as a newspaper writer on that Sunday afternoon of Feb. 12, 1984, when the University of Arkansas' Charles Balentine hit a shot to bring down a No. 1 North Carolina team led by Michael Jordan. I was there when the King Cotton Classic was among the top high school basketball tournaments in the country.
The Go Forward Pine Bluff plan calls for an annual Celebrate The Delta Festival, an annual Delta Classic Christmas Invitational Basketball Tournament, an annual Torii Hunter Baseball Tournament of Champions, a system of hiking and biking trails, public gardens, an area for food trucks downtown and an incentive program to attract restaurants and retailers to a renovated downtown district. We'll likely never see the Razorbacks playing games in Pine Bluff again, but it's good that residents of the city are thinking big.
Martin, Pringos and May described the Go Forward Pine Bluff effort as "our last real chance to turn things around and to begin recovering from two decades or longer of a downward spiral. While we too are frustrated with the constant negative publicity, we believe that our community has perpetuated that reputation by giving more lip service than meaningful actions. More of the same will produce more of the same. This is not an issue of can we do it. It is a question of will we do it or will we be satisfied with more of the same."
------------v------------
Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate community relations for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 01/25/2017