In the wake of recent columns I've written about the future of Little Rock, a friend sent me a note.
"I recommend showing up at Fassler Hall about 9 p.m. on a Saturday night for anyone who thinks there are no young people in Little Rock," he wrote about the new German-style restaurant and beer garden downtown. "My wife and I decided to venture there last weekend for supper because it had been written up in a local publication. The place is enormous. It has a huge dining hall and an even larger outside beer garden. There were about 200 people in there, and most of them were in their 20s and 30s. It was a bit loud for old folks, and I saw only three people I recognized, which is a testament to my age and irrelevance. But I was heartened by the fact that these folks are in the city and coming downtown to drink and dine. This is the kind of attraction that young people want and that thriving cities offer."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: For all of the city's problems, downtown Little Rock is becoming an attractive neighborhood as far as the amenities young, talented people desire. For those seeking an urban environment, downtown Little Rock offers buildings that lend themselves to loft apartments along with quality museums, trails and a critical mass of restaurants, bars and music venues within walking distance of those loft apartments. Even with all of its growth in recent decades, Northwest Arkansas can't offer that kind of urban lifestyle.
"There's so much potential here for growth if we can galvanize the corporate sector to actually partner with new, visionary leadership and push the city forward," says one Little Rock architect. "I applaud the growth of Northwest Arkansas, but this isn't a zero-sum game. I think Little Rock has more potential given its urban amenities and density for those looking for a true city lifestyle with a large downtown, historic mixed-use neighborhoods, etc. When it comes to scale, amenities, density and infrastructure, Little Rock has more in common with high-growth cities such as Austin and Nashville than does Northwest Arkansas."
For those who point to high crime rankings, look only as far as Memphis, a city that shows up on the same lists of most dangerous cities (many of which are highly subjective) as Little Rock. Memphis recently was featured in the Sunday Travel section of The New York Times in a story headlined "From Blight to Bright Lights in Memphis." Writer Alyson Krueger noted that Memphis has "increased local efforts to transform blighted areas into buzzy social hot spots. In the process, these projects are making Memphis a more tempting place for tourists to explore." Tourism increased by 13 percent from 2012-17. According to the commercial real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield, Memphis has seen $13 billion invested in more than 250 revitalization projects in just the past four years. Why not Little Rock?
Tab Townsell, the former Conway mayor who now heads the Central Arkansas planning organization known as Metroplan, points out that his organization's demographer found that the percentage of young residents is growing faster in Little Rock than Northwest Arkansas.
One urban planner I know describes Northwest Arkansas as "the trendy one making the noise. Sometimes optimism and pessimism are more about which way your head is turned rather than which way you're going. Maybe we're doing better than we think in Little Rock. In a similar sense, the University of Arkansas is the flagship public university in the state. It gets the headlines. It has the energy. However, the larger student enrollment is parked in the other more staid public universities across the state. They're more sensible for some families and have their own energy if not the knack for self-promotion."
Indeed, the combined enrollment of the University of Central Arkansas at Conway and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is about 21,000, compared with almost 26,000 students in Fayetteville. If you add in the four private four-year colleges in the Little Rock metropolitan area (Hendrix College and Central Baptist College in Conway along with Arkansas Baptist College and Philander Smith College in Little Rock), there are almost as many college students in the Little Rock metropolitan area as there are in Northwest Arkansas. That doesn't even take into account the economic powerhouse that is the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
What if Little Rock creates the kind of downtown that convinces graduates of these institutions of higher education to live there? As I've noted more than once the past few weeks, it's essential that both Northwest Arkansas and Little Rock do well if Arkansas is to advance as a state, especially given the fact that two-thirds of the state is losing population.
People in both regions should be rooting for each other. Online comments from smug Northwest Arkansas residents (I read dozens of them during the debates over whether Razorback football games should continue to be played at War Memorial Stadium) about gunshots, muggings and the like have grown tiresome. Many of those comments border on being racist in nature. With just 3 million residents, we're too small a state not to be rooting for all sections to do well.
"Little Rock seems to be treated by the state as that kept first mistress but not afforded a proper pension," says the urban planner. "If the state wants an incomparable capital city, it has to invest in that relationship. And I'm talking about more than tax-exempt public buildings."
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 06/02/2018