Stacey McMinn

Ward chamber’s new president is a community advocate

Stacey McMinn, administrator at Allied Therapy & Consulting Services in Ward, is the new president of the Ward Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. McMinn has helped Allied Therapy grow over the years, and she is excited to bring growth to the city of Ward.
Stacey McMinn, administrator at Allied Therapy & Consulting Services in Ward, is the new president of the Ward Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. McMinn has helped Allied Therapy grow over the years, and she is excited to bring growth to the city of Ward.

Stacey McMinn loves her hometown. Nestled between Cabot and Beebe, the city of Ward has an estimated population of just under 5,000 and a lot of heart, McMinn said.

“The people are the best thing about Ward,” she said. “We really do have people who care about each other, and that’s hard to find these days.”

McMinn said that recently, a woman had run out of gas and was at a local gas station. Feeling neighborly, McMinn stopped to see if she could buy the woman some gas. That’s when she found out that two people had already stopped with the same offer, and the woman was already taken care of.

“That’s the kind of town we live in,” McMinn said.

As president of the Ward Chamber of Commerce since April, McMinn is working to highlight the appeal of the small Lonoke County town and attract businesses to make the city even better.

“That’s what the chamber is all about,” she said. “We need to encourage businesses.”

McMinn grew up in Ward, the daughter of Don Carlos “Dude” Spence and Margie Spence. McMinn’s father served as Lonoke County judge for 16 years, and both he and McMinn’s mother taught her and her siblings how to work hard and be constructive citizens.

“My parents are amazing people,” McMinn said. “My dad died several years ago, and my mom is 87 years old. They are who I try to model my life after.”

After graduating from high school, McMinn attended the University of Arkansas, then lived in Washington, D.C., for a bit. After a short stint in Cincinnati, Ohio, she returned home to Ward.

“I’ve been back here for 24 years,” she said. “I loved that urban feel [in Washington, D.C.]. In fact, I love Argenta in North Little Rock and the downtown Little Rock area. But I also love having space, and I love when someone holds the door open for me. It makes me feel like we are really concerned with being nice to each other.”

McMinn labels herself as a jack-of-all-trades. Upon moving back to Arkansas, she spent some time working at a day care and started back to school to pursue a master’s degree. Soon, she got a call from Allied Therapy & Consulting Services offering her a job answering the phone.

“What I didn’t know was they wanted to start a Mother’s Day Out program, and they knew I had experience at a day care,” she said. “But I was actually trying to get away from working in that kind of day care environment.”

She took the job at Allied Therapy, which was a very small company at the time. She has been with them since then, and now the company has 70 employees and two clinics — one in Ward and one in North Little Rock.

Allied Therapy provides physical, occupational, speech and developmental therapy for its clients. The company started in 1993, moved to its current clinic in Ward in 2005 and opened its North Little Rock clinic in early 2011.

McMinn’s faithfulness and consistency has helped her keep the second-in-command position at Allied Health as it has grown over the years.

“We serve everyone in central Arkansas,” McMinn said.

Through Allied Therapy, McMinn sits on the board of Beyond Boundaries, a nonprofit focused on using horses as a therapy tool to help clients work on motor, sensory, speech and behavior/social responses. Beyond Boundaries’ programs include therapeutic riding, straightforward horseback-riding lessons, Happy Trails Summer Camps and other horse-related opportunities.

Along with her job and her volunteer efforts, McMinn said, she has been involved with the chamber for a long time.

“I’ve been in and out of involvement with the chamber for a while,” she said. “They always knew they could call me, but I wasn’t consistently involved until about a year and a half ago.”

As her children have gotten older, McMinn has had more time to be involved in the Ward community, specifically through the chamber. Her passion for her hometown fueled a desire to make the city the best it can be while showing others what she loves about Ward.

“I wanted to get involved, but I didn’t know if I knew enough to get involved,” she said. “That’s when I decided to really get involved in the chamber.”

In April of this year, McMinn started her first year as president of the Ward Chamber of Commerce. She has already implemented some of her plans to make the chamber building and Ward in general a more beautiful and welcoming place.

“We’ve already made some initial plans,” she said. “I’ve worked with a partnership with the school district. I want some culture in our area.”

One way to do this is to display art created by students — specifically from Ward Central Elementary School and Cabot High School — in the chamber building at 80 Second St.

“We need to put some artwork in there that can be displayed or taken down if the building is used for an event,” she said.

The outside of the building may be getting a face-lift as well, after conversations with the art department at Cabot High School.

“My hope is that by spring next year, we have a plan for a mural to go on our building,” McMinn said.

Of course, the aesthetics of the chamber are just one step in the process of highlighting and promoting Ward. The chamber, McMinn pointed out, is a nongovernment entity that works for the betterment of the city. One big way to do that is to attract and support businesses.

“I want to start a farmers market,” she said. “We wanted to do one this summer, but we only had a few people respond. We’re going to go about it in a different manner.”

McMinn said a farmers market could be a big opportunity to support a lot of the businesses that already exist in the city.

“Ward itself has a lot of in-home businesses and small businesses,” she said. “A farmers market could be a great way to get more involvement from them.”

With plans to get the chamber building spruced up, McMinn wants to bring one of the hottest culinary fads to Ward — food trucks.

“We want to move tables outside and have food trucks come every Thursday night,” she said. “If we could help someone put roots down, they might even open up [a brick-and-mortar restaurant] in our area.”

McMinn has more plans and ideas for the chamber, but these first few thoughts are getting her started in her first year as president.

Ultimately, she wants more people to see the appeal of coming home to put down roots and invest in Ward.

“I want kids to return to the area,” she said. “The mentality here is very family-oriented.”

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