Jerry Smith said that when he called in the movers and shakers of Morrilton to see why Leadership Conway County and downtown festivals such as Pig Out had ended, he was surprised at the answer.
“I thought they were going to close the door and tell me some secret, but they said they were just worn out,” he said. “There was no politics; there were no missing funds; they just wore out.”
Smith, who is the president and CEO of the Morrilton Area Chamber of Commerce and Conway County Economic Development Corp. said his theory is that each new leadership class handled many of the big events, and when the classes stopped, momentum was lost.
“It’s a small town; there are just so many people,” Smith said.
However, the pendulum has swung back.
“We’ve got some momentum building for downtown; we really do,” he said, adding that the enthusiasm is spreading to the entire city.
Three historic buildings are being restored, and a new coffee shop has opened downtown, for starters.
Smith said it’s not a coincidence that Leadership Conway County is back after a several-year hiatus. It graduated a class in May.
Molly Thomason, conference food-service manager at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain, is one of those graduates.
Although she works and once lived on Petit Jean Mountain, she now lives in Perryville. She said her supervisor at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute asked her to consider joining Leadership Conway County.
“I didn’t even know it existed,” she said. But when Thomason was told it was about developing leaders for the next generation, “it piqued my interest,” she said. “That’s something I’ve always been interested in.”
Thomason said she joined the leadership class and was impressed with the programs.
“We did some great classes, not only on leadership, but Jerry took us on tours of things in the county so we found out what Conway County has to offer,” she said. “There were great businesses involved, and they were so energized and ready to see us there.”
Thomason said it was an eye-opening experience to tour some of the businesses.
“The one that I was most impressed with was the water works — the water plant. I had never been in a water plant, and I had no idea how it worked, and it was amazing,” she said, laughing. “We also toured Petit Jean Meats, and it was really cool to go through a factory and talk to them about the different businesses around the country they work with that you don’t even realize, like Neiman Marcus and the Dallas Cowboys.”
In addition to Leadership Conway County’s revival, Smith also credits the momentum in Morrilton to Uncommon Communities, an initiative of the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on nearby Petit Jean Mountain.
“That’s given us extra motivation and knowledge,” he said. “Uncommon Communities definitely helped spark the new energy in Morrilton, but Leadership Conway County was being developed before Uncommon Communities.”
In its third year, Uncommon Communities is a community and economic-
development initiative through the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute that provides participants, chosen by their respective communities, the opportunity to attend five sessions at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute over the course of a year, according to the institute.
Five counties were chosen for the pilot group — Conway, Perry, Pope, Van Buren and Yell — and representatives of those counties attend sessions every other month. Topics include community leadership development, economic development, tourism, marketing and branding, quality of place and more.
“Uncommon Communities has been a spark for different things but has not led on anything locally. It has been a tremendous training for a lot of people,” Smith said. “It’s hard to see where it’s been used, but it’s definitely had an impact.”
For example, he said one of the speakers through Uncommon Communities was “so impressive” speaking about a Paint the Town project in Greenville, Kentucky, that Smith and others organized a trip to see the city.
Morrilton is “in the middle of” its own Paint the Town project, Smith said.
It involves painting the facades of downtown buildings, “and they were professionally done with the right kind of design and palette to fit the age of the buildings and architecture,” he said.
“It’s a project we’re working on. It’s moving slowly right now, but we’re still planning to do that,” he said.
More ideas are sure to come, Smith said. Although Pig Out isn’t back, in March, several organizations went together to hold Munchin’ on Main Street, a festival of food trucks. Although it wasn’t a leadership-class or Uncommon Communities project per se, Smith said some of the volunteers participated in those programs.
“We’re really looking forward to year three of Uncommon Communities,” Smith said. “We’ve identified some new folks to be in the class. They’re going to meet in our community to kick it off in September.”
Also, recruitment is underway for the next Leadership Conway County class, which will kick off in August, Smith said.
Thomason said she noticed the same faces in various
community groups coming from Conway County to events at Winrock International, and she mentioned that to Smith.
When it came to a leadership-class project, Thomason said class members took their time figuring out what legacy they wanted to leave.
“We wanted something that would last more than putting a park up,” she said.
She said members of the Leadership Conway County class visited with participants in a Newport leadership program, which had been successful for years.
“We saw they had a very well-planned-out, organized class,” she said.
The leadership class decided its project would be making sure the next class is successful.
“We figured out a way to take what we’ve learned and develop into a more cohesive class and put it on ourselves to go out and get new recruits,” she said. Thomason said the idea was to tell potential members what the graduates experienced and learned, “and it would be more attractive to people to get involved.”
Thomason said her class had about 16 members, and the goal for the next class is 20 members.
The curriculum is set, registration packets are available, and members are being recruited for the class that starts in August, she said.
“The last people who joined us were high school students,” she said. “They were the best addition; they brought this enthusiasm and vision. … We didn’t have the eyes of the youth.”
She said some of the students talked about wanting to come back to Morrilton after college to work.
Although the previous leadership class had only Morrilton
High School students, “we want to get at least one student from every high school in Conway County,” she said.
The purpose of the leadership class is to “bring in new blood to energize the community,” Thomason said. “I think if we can get this going and get this second class kicked off, it’ll really make an impact on the community. With recruits, we can keep the spirit of Morrilton going.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.