BENTONVILLE -- A project along Northeast Blake Avenue will preserve a piece of the downtown landscape and turn it into a social and wellness club.
The project belongs to Bentonville-based Ropeswing, which develops dining, entertainment and cultural attractions.
The Blake Street House Grounds
The social club will have 67 parking spaces.
An eight-foot-wide sidewalk with greenspace will surround the property’s perimeter. Six existing mature trees will also be preserved.
Northeast B and C streets as well as Northeast Blake Avenue will receive improvements.
Source: Bentonville Planning Department
The 18,400-square-foot development -- The Blake Street House -- will be at 301 N.E. Blake Ave., the site of a house built in the late 1880s by Thomas Taylor Blake.
Blake was a businessman and sheriff. He was also a lumber salesman and operated the Blake Hotel for 35 years, according to report by Strata Architecture. Hufft, a Kansas City, Mo.-based architect firm, is designing The Blake Street House and consulted with Strata. Strata provided a report on the history of the home and what was authentic to the original structure.
Blake built the two-story framed, folk Victorian style house for $2,000 around 1887 and 1888 when Bentonville saw a building boom during post Civil War reconstruction, according to the report. The house underwent several alterations and was added on to a few times over the last three to four decades, said Matthew Hufft.
The house will be returned to its original two-story, four-bedroom footprint, he said. The front porch will also remain.
The house as a social club will include gathering spaces, club dining, fitness and wellness programming and a 100-foot lap pool, according to Rob Apple, managing director for Ropeswing. The club will be available to members and guests. The anticipated opening is fall 2018.
The house isn't on the national Register of Historic Places, said Mark Christ, spokesman for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. It's hard to draw a definitive line between a historical home and one that's just old, he said, explaining structures on the register are there because someone applied for them to be on it.
Structures added to the register are typically at least 50 years old and have to meet certain criteria regarding a historical theme, association with a historical person, have architectural value or a combination of those, Christ said.
Structures could have those requirements, but not be on the register because no one has ever applied for it to be.
"These historic properties are tangible links to the past," he said. "It reminds you of where you came from."
Builders will be sensitive to how new construction is attached to the old house as well as to the detailing on the addition, Hufft said.
"We want that to be apparent so you understand intrinsically when you're in the old and the new (sections)," he said.
Entrance into the social club will be through the old house. There will be a lounge on either side of the main entry way. A glass bridge will connect the old and new buildings.
"The new portion of the project is, we think a modern interpretation of what the old house is," Hufft said, giving examples such as the roof having the same pitch and the white siding being similar but not identical to the house. "Everything is taking a cue from the house, but everything will be new. It will be different but complementary."
Other recent Ropeswing projects include Record, an event space at the corner of Southwest A and Central Avenue and The Preacher's Son, a restaurant at 201 N.W. A St.
"Both of these structures have been a part of the downtown landscape for years, and we wanted to treat them with as much care as possible," Apple said.
The same goes for The Blake Street House, which is why Strata was consulted, he said.
"Through that process, we discovered very little of the original structure remained," Apple continued. "However, we believe this house is an important piece of the downtown landscape, and we decided to keep as much of the structure as possible."
Construction fences are scheduled to go up today, officials said.
NW News on 03/13/2017