Gary Brinkley’s most recent jobs should help him with his newest endeavor.
Brinkley was the general manager of Stockyard Stations, a development company in the famed Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District of Fort Worth, Texas, for 16 years. He lived in his hometown of Saginaw, just north of Fort Worth, and served 23 years in municipal government, including a recent 11-year stint as mayor.
Brinkley plans to apply the knowledge of both worlds as the city manager of Arkadelphia.
“The combination of working so closely with the city of Fort Worth and the development of The Stockyards, and serving on six or seven boards at the same time — those two really worked well together because of it being a big city and small city,” he said. “I knew the rules and implications because I was the recipient of some and a legislator of others.
“I had a really unique perspective of both worlds. I could see how you would make a judgment and make an ordinance that would have implications on citizens other than businesses, specifically, and actually have to legislate those. That is a unique perspective because you have a deeper understanding of what you do and how it affects other people.”
On the job for close to a month, the native Texan is adjusting well to life in Arkansas. He was familiar with Arkadelphia after he and his wife, Carolyn, made a few trips with their daughter, Madeline, while she competed in basketball and volleyball camps at Henderson State University and Ouachita Baptist University.
“We had talked about when we retired moving up to Arkansas because it is so pretty up here,” he said. “There is so much beauty here. The last city manager in Fort Worth retired to Hot Springs Village. The seed was planted. It is so beautiful here, and the people are so goodhearted. It’s just a great place.”
Brinkley launched his development career upon graduation from Baylor University.
He became the assistant mall manager at Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth in 1985. After working there for four years, he became a manager for a property-management company.
A year later, he became the general manager at Nolan River Mall in Cleburne, Texas, a small town a little over an hour from Dallas. For eight years, Brinkley became entrenched in the community. Like his father, he got involved in community organizations such as the chamber of commerce. He was a part of helping the community grow and develop independently from Dallas.
“A lot of the people [in Arkadelphia] remind me of the people in Cleburne because they have fought for themselves for so long and made it, being farther away from large economic engines,” he said.
Brinkley lived in Saginaw, the town he grew up in, focused on his development career. He intended on delving into local politics, but at 31, he wasn’t quite ready. However, in 1994 when Saginaw’s mayor died of a heart attack and two councilmen ran for the position, Brinkley found himself on the council.
“One of the matriarchs of the town asked me if I was going to run for office, and I told her I would in the future,” he said. “She told me I was running now. When someone like that tells you that, you don’t say no. One thing led to another, and I had a 23-year avocational career.
Brinkley served six years on the Saginaw City Council, six years as the city’s mayor pro tem and 11 years as the mayor.
Brinkley’s challenge was preparing for the population boom from Metroplex commuters looking for small-town comfort. Saginaw’s population increased from 12,374 in 2000 to 19,806 in 2010.
“A lot of the stuff we did right, but you are never going to be perfect,” he said. “A lot of the zoning, the infrastructure issues we had early on that helped facilitate that growth spurt — I think I would really be able to apply a lot of those techniques in Arkadelphia.
“We invested a lot in our infrastructure so when the boom hit in the mid-’90s, there were a lot of communities shutting down building permits because they couldn’t keep up with the infrastructure. We had already invested in the infrastructure. We had everything laid out and planned out. A lot of it was already in the ground ready. We never missed a beat. We were never not able to accommodate the 150 building permits for homes per year.”
Life was good for Brinkley and Carolyn, a Texas Christian University graduate who just wrapped up a 29-year teaching career. They raised a daughter, Madeline, who played volleyball at Austin College and is now a teacher, and Luke, who completed his sophomore year at Oklahoma Wesleyan University and is a member of the baseball team.
With an empty nest, Brinkley was reminded of his intrigue of Arkansas. He visited Fayetteville last fall with friends to watch the LSU/Arkansas football game. The couple were ready for a change.
“When I saw the Arkadelphia job posted with the Texas Municipal League, I applied immediately,” Brinkley said. “That combines all of my experience for the past 35 years and culminates in a job. Could I have gotten a job as a developer somewhere? Probably so, but I love building communities and making places better for people to live. That is why I served so long on the City Council in Saginaw. I grew up there. I knew as long as I was making people’s lives better, that is an honorable avocation. So how much better would it be to make that your vocation? The stars just lined up for me to be [in Arkadelphia].”
The job was a perfect fit for Brinkley’s municipal and commercial experience.
“I have had a foot in both worlds forever, so I really wanted to find a city-management position,” Brinkley said. “This was a perfect situation with the potential Arkadelphia has and all of the great people here.”
Now Brinkley will attempt to grow Arkadelphia, which has a population of a little more than 10,000, like he helped with in Cleburne and Saginaw. Brinkley knows that with two universities and a vast amount of prime commercial real estate, Arkadelphia has a bright future.
“Rooftops drive retail,” he said. “We are going to have to create an environment where we have more rooftops. We had the same thing in
Cleburne. Cleburne was static at about 17,000. I was thinking, ‘We need rooftops’ because I was running a mall, and I needed people living there and shopping. Certain developments occurred, and things happened. We facilitated a few things to get it to happen, and when [the population] got to 20,000 or more, then we got Home Depot and other retail wanting to come to town. You had this growth, and you had people remodeling their homes.
“You have to have a certain level of population density to get [bigger retail outlets]. Are those possible? Absolutely, they are possible. The fact that we are on Interstate 30, and we have developable land on Interstate 30, the answer is ‘yes.’ But we are going to have to raise our population size to warrant that investment by national companies.”
While he is just getting his feet wet, the Texas import has fit right in and looks forward to the next chapter of life in new, but not totally unfamiliar, surroundings.
“Somebody told me I was the first person they talked to that came [to Arkadelphia] who was excited and hungry to be here,” he said. “I said, ‘OK. That is just who I am.’ When I go somewhere I become part of the community. There are great people [in Arkadelphia]. Just goodhearted people. That is very attractive to me because I grew up in a small town and worked in a small town such as Cleburne. When you are with good people working hard to make things better for people, there is nothing more rewarding than that. I think we can really work together to make the quality of life better here for everyone.”