Frank Holbrook of Conway said that as he travels Arkansas, he drives through cities with streets named after his hero, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but not in Conway.
Holbrook suggested the idea to the city, but now a committee has been formed to consider naming a new park for the late civil-rights leader in conjunction with the $3.5 million Markham Street Corridor project in downtown Conway.
“Conway is so progressive. … That’s where my motivation came from —
we’re doing such a good job. Why not put our money where our mouth is?” Holbrook asked.
Holbrook, president of the Faulkner County branch of the NAACP, said having a street named for King was “one of my big agenda pieces.” Holbrook said his third term as president ends in January.
The proposed street-renaming was a topic of a Ward 2 meeting Nov. 4 sponsored by Shelley Mehl, city councilwoman for one of the Ward 2 positions. Controversy arose at the meeting when suggestions were made to rename historic Pine Street, where the black school was located in Conway, or Markham Street, where black businesses dominated decades ago.
Mayor Bart Castleberry proposed a solution that seem to appeal to everyone: Name the park to be built in the Markham Street Corridor for the late civil-rights leader.
The Pine Street/Markham Street volunteer committee will meet at 5:30 p.m.
Jan. 13 in the Community Room of the Conway Police Department to discuss the vision for the park and corridor, Mehl said.
“The focus is on, ‘How do we honor Dr. King? What kind of statues and history do we want in the park?’” she said.
The Conway City Council will have to approve naming the park after King.
The idea meets the approval of 63-year-old Leona Walton, a lifelong Pine Street community resident who will serve on the new committee.
“I think that’s cool,” Walton said.
She said she was adamantly opposed to renaming Markham or Pine Street because of the history associated with them.
The Markham Street Corridor project, adopted in 2013 by the city, will connect downtown Conway with Hendrix College. The first phase of the corridor project is being paid for with a matching grant — 20 percent from the city and 80 percent from Metroplan, a central-Arkansas transportation-planning agency.
The engineering firm Garver of Little Rock designed the plan, which will include sidewalks, bike lanes and parallel parking. Fureigh Heavy Construction of Conway is doing the work.
Finley Vinson, Conway’s transportation director and engineer, said the grant doesn’t pay for all of Markham Street.
The project was bid to end at Mill Street, but Garver will ask the City Council at its meeting Tuesday to approve a change order to take construction to Walnut Street, said Dustin Tackett, project manager for Garver.
“There’s enough federal funding to take it one additional block,” Tackett said.
That would leave two blocks to finish to connect the corridor with Hendrix College. Vinson said the city is writing another grant proposal to submit to Metroplan to finish the corridor.
The scheduled completion date for the Markham Street construction is summer 2020. If the second grant is approved, construction could continue through 2021 to finish the project to Hendrix College, Vinson said.
James Walden, director of city planning, said the $1.5 million park is a separate project from the Markham Street Corridor.
The park is being created in a former scrapyard at 1110 Spencer St., which underwent an environmental cleanup after it was cleared of debris in 2015. The 1.23-acre site is bordered by Markham Street to the east. Work on the park started Oct. 1, and the requests for qualifications were sent out by the city, said Marsha Guffey of Bryant, part-time grants administrator for Conway. Guffey wrote the Markham Square Water Quality Demonstration Project grant for the park.
She said the Environmental Protection Agency, through an Arkansas Natural Resources Commission Section 319 grant, provided $600,000; the city is kicking in about $880,000.
The grant is only for the water component of the park — funding will have to be secured for any other amenities, she said.
“We have some ideas of what could go in there … but we don’t have the money for those yet,” Guffey said.
Walden said there are three goals with the park.
“Essentially, we’re trying to do a trifecta with it, where the purpose of those grants is for water-quality demonstration,” Walden said. The primary emphasis is to “improve water quality of the stormwater that filters through it. The second of the secondary impacts we’re trying to achieve is some level of retention for stormwater. There’s a lot of flooding in that area. … And having a nice urban park is … a third [purpose of the park],” Walden said.
The park project is required to be completed by Sept. 30, 2022, but Guffey said the city of Conway expects the park to be completed sooner.
The city received five submissions of qualifications from consultants, and a committee will recommend one to the City Council, possibly at its Tuesday meeting, said Jamie Brice, the city’s procurement manager.
Those five consultants were Crafton Tull and Associates, which has an office in Conway; Environmental Design Group in Little Rock; McClelland Consulting Engineers of Little Rock; Pickering of Little Rock; and SWA Associates Consulting Engineers of Dallas, Texas.
Guffey said that once the design group is chosen, public meetings will be scheduled on the park proposal for the water-quality elements that the consultants are charged with designing.
Castleberry said members of the Pine Street community “love their community, love Conway, and they want [the park and corridor] done right.”
Walton, who grew up in the nearby Pine Street community and attended the school until it closed when she was in the sixth grade, stood on Markham Street in front of the former building of The Golden Drag, now Better Life Ministries, where she used to go get a hamburger with her mother. She patted the front of the building.
“This was my place,” she said.
She said the name was later changed to Deluxe Diner.
“We still called it The Drag,” Walton said. “You could dance in there, play the jukebox in there, get a hamburger, sit down and drink a Coca-Cola out of the bottle, or a Pepsi, and put some peanuts in it. … We walked downtown and stopped right through there and got a hamburger. I’m talking about when I was 11 or 12.”
A barbershop was in the other half of the building, she said.
Mehl said another suggestion that came from the Ward 2
meeting is to place commemorative plaques on the sidewalks to identify where the historic black businesses were on the street.
However, that will have to be incorporated later, Walden said.
Walden said placing commemorative plaques on the sidewalks was one of several “great ideas — more discussion items,” that came from the meeting.
“We can go back and do some of those things,” Walden said. “With our Certified Local Government grants through Arkansas Historic Preservation, those are things we could possibly get some money for in the future. … From a historic-preservation standpoint … one of the priorities is making sure the African American heritage is not lost. … If we can’t preserve the structure, we can preserve the memory.”
Vinson said the corridor’s construction will create a positive impact.
“After it’s built, it will be a narrow street with a lot of character. Roadway improvements always enhance the nearby community. It will promote activity, which will promote commerce, which will promote activity — it’s a positive upward cycle. It’s exciting,” Vinson said.
The mayor agreed. “I think it’s going to really enhance our northern entrance to downtown Conway,” Castleberry said. “It’s going to … allow us to maintain and keep our historical significance [of Markham Street].”
Walden said that when the corridor is completed, “it could be transformational.”
Holbrook grew up in West Memphis, but he’s lived in Conway for 21 years. Although he would like to see a street named in King’s honor, he likes the idea of the park, he said.
“I don’t want it to just be a black thing,” Holbrook said. “As long as it’s something that’s genuine, and it’s something the city can embrace as a whole, I’m all for it.
“Dr. Martin Luther King is my hero. He was a spiritual leader who was purposed by God. [Dr. King’s] speeches educated leaders on history and accountability, inspired white citizens to join the nonviolence movement and empowered African Americans to stand together, protest together and win together.”
Holbrook said that among other advantages, having a street, park or other entity named after King would “reiterate a commitment of city leaders to make Conway a diverse and inclusive city; add value to the African American citizens and recognize their cultural contributions to the city of Conway.”
Regardless of what is decided about honoring King, Mehl said, it should be an evolving project.
“We might have some version of our own commemorative wall in the park, but I think we need to leave space for the future,” Mehl said. “It shouldn’t stop at 2020; it should be a forward-looking memorial — and not just honoring Dr. King, but all of the people who grew up in the Pine Street community, too.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can reached at (501) 327-5671 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.