It's a cold, rainy day outside. The heat is working inside, though, and I'm thoroughly enjoying my tour of the soon-to-open AC Hotel by Marriott on Capitol Avenue in downtown Little Rock. Following Marriott's takeover of the Starwood brands, there are now 30 brands that operate under the Marriott flag. AC is among the hippest.
"AC is big on design," says Kerry Thompson, sales director for the new hotel. "There were a lot of specifications we had to meet."
I stare at the large lobby bar while being told about the signature cocktails that will be sold there. Manhattans, for example, will be served on smoky wood blocks. Given AC's European roots, there will be a long list of Spanish wines.
The breakfast bar, meanwhile, will be unlike anything Little Rock has seen before. It will offer a European-style breakfast with pastries, meats and cheeses. My tour guides show me an extremely expensive prosciutto slicer that just arrived from Europe. The hotel store will sell candles in AC's signature scent along with items made in Arkansas.
The old Hall and Davidson buildings, which will house the hotel, provide enough space for 114 rooms with a fitness center on the third floor. The original marble, tile floors, and some of the brass in those buildings have been saved. The hotel also will feature the work of Arkansas painters and sculptors.
I expect that Little Rock area residents will come to the hotel not to spend the night but instead to try out the breakfast offerings, drink at the bar, and browse the gift shop.
The AC chain was founded in 1998 in Madrid, Spain. Marriott bought AC in 2011 and announced in 2013 that it would bring the hotels to North America. The first of those properties, AC Hotel New Orleans Bourbon, opened in December 2014. It was followed by hotels in Miami Beach, Kansas City, Atlanta and Tucson.
As I toured the Little Rock property, I thought about a line that I often hear in central Arkansas. It usually follows news of something new coming to northwest Arkansas and goes like this: "How come they get all the cool stuff?"
Believe me, folks in northwest Arkansas would love to have an AC Hotel. Perception is reality, as they say in politics, and the perception of people across the state is that northwest Arkansas is leaving central Arkansas in the dust when it comes to growth and getting the "cool stuff." The fact is that both metro areas are doing pretty well when it comes to growth, especially considering the fact that two-thirds of Arkansas counties are losing population.
One of the best stories I've seen on the transformation of northwest Arkansas was published last month by online media website Thrillist, founded in 2004 to cover travel, entertainment, food and drink.
"Walmart Inc. could have brought monstrous investment into any of America's biggest and most expensive cities, but the Walton family has kept it continuously headquartered in Bentonville," Kastalia Medrano wrote. "And so, for the second half of the 20th century, Bentonville's cycle of rises and falls was effectively on pause. Walmart was the only name in town. It overtook the identity of the region entirely, providing between 14,000 and 18,000 people in Benton County with jobs, if not much in the way of culture or aesthetics beyond strip-mall capitalism at a discount.
"Then, in 2011, Bentonville unveiled Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It was the biggest art museum opening in America in almost 40 years, and it launched Bentonville--a rural community known only for Walmart--into the cultural spotlight overnight. Free to the public and stocked with the finest collection that money can buy, Crystal Bridges has since pulled in more than 1 million visitors and collaborated with the Louvre.
"A world-class attraction like that creates demand for amenities to match--places to stay, places to eat, places to shop. Not big-box stores; nice places. In less than a decade, Bentonville's image has been successfully rehabilitated from bland corporate flyover country into a must-visit up-and-coming travel destination."
Medrano noted how the downtown area became "buffeted by a rapid succession of boutique hotels and artisan shops and fashionable bars and restaurants."
The smartest thing the business and civic leaders of northwest Arkansas ever did was tie the Walmart miracle in Benton County to Washington County, home of the state's flagship university in Fayetteville and one of the world's largest food producers in Springdale.
Take the University of Arkansas, Tyson Foods and Walmart. Throw in trucking company J.B. Hunt and hundreds of Walmart vendors with a presence in the state. Add what's now Interstate 49 and the Northwest Arkansas National Airport. Combine Razorback sports in Washington County with the cultural amenities of Benton County. Boom. You have one of the most desirable regions in the country to live.
The key is thinking and acting as a region. It's quite common these days to hear people say that they live in northwest Arkansas. It's far less common to hear them say they live in central Arkansas. Rather than central Arkansas, it's Little Rock, Benton, Bryant, Conway or Cabot.
Back in the fall, I attended a panel discussion at Ron Robinson Theater in downtown Little Rock (yet another of those cool places that any part of the state would love to have) to hear former Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines, former Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays talk about how they worked together to develop parks, trails, pedestrian bridges, an arena, a baseball park, a convention center and a presidential library along the Arkansas River.
"I never could understand what the feuding between Little Rock and North Little Rock was all about," Villines said. "But it takes time to change those things. Every major project I worked on took a minimum of eight years."
Dailey said: "We're all one community. I tried to approach things this way: If I were the mayor of both sides of the river, this is how we would do it."
Their efforts were historic and heroic. They made life better for those of us who call Pulaski County home. Still, the discussion seemed almost quaint, given what's now happening in Arkansas. Both northwest Arkansas and central Arkansas must thrive in the years ahead to make up for the population losses in the Delta and south Arkansas.
In central Arkansas, that's going to require a four-county approach involving the leaders of Pulaski, Saline, Faulkner and Lonoke counties. Like Benton and Washington counties, it's time to think as one region.
Conway has been on a roll lately. DXC Technology announced that it will add 1,200 jobs to a current workforce of about 400 people. One thing the company does is provide data management services for state Medicaid programs. It has about 6,000 clients in more than 70 countries.
Soon after that announcement, Structurlam Mass Timber Corp. of Canada announced that it will build its first U.S.-based timber manufacturing plant in Conway, investing $90 million and creating 130 jobs. Three days after that December announcement, SFI of Arkansas announced it will add 75 workers to a current workforce of 70 to develop heavy-gauge components for equipment manufacturers.
Those Conway announcements are all good for Little Rock. By the same token, Little Rock projects such as a new AC Hotel, a multimillion-dollar expansion of the Arkansas Arts Center, and a marina on the Arkansas River are good for Conway. It all comes back to thinking, planning and acting as a four-county region.
I'm an optimist when it comes to the future of northwest Arkansas and central Arkansas. There's plenty of "cool stuff" to go around.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 01/12/2020