OPINION

REX NELSON: A city's rebirth

It's the Thursday after Christmas, and my son and I are attending the first day of the King Cotton Classic at Pine Bluff. We're sitting by Charles Balentine, the man responsible for the most memorable moment in the history of the Pine Bluff Convention Center.

Balentine, a Newport native, hit a baseline jumper with four seconds remaining as the University of Arkansas stunned the No. 1 Tar Heels from the University of North Carolina by a final score of 65-64. The Tar Heels were 19-0 coming into that game on Feb. 12, 1984, and had a player named Michael Jordan.

Balentine is here to support the return of King Cotton, a high school basketball tournament that began in 1982 and continued until 1999. It was once considered the top tournament of its kind in the country. One of the people stopping by to visit with Balentine is Travis Creed, the Pine Bluff banker who started King Cotton. Creed worked night and day to line up businesses to sponsor the tournament back when Pine Bluff was still vibrant. He tells me how worried he was that first morning when he woke up to heavy snow. The show went on, not only that first day in 1982, but also for the next 17 years.

Across the way I see Kareem Reid, the former Razorback basketball star who was discovered by Arkansas head coach Nolan Richardson while playing at King Cotton for St. Raymond High School for Boys out of New York City. Reid is preparing to do radio commentary for the evening games. There are nothing but smiles on the faces of longtime Pine Bluff residents. They're reminded of the days when Pine Bluff was a vital city in Arkansas. The 7,500-seat arena in its convention center hosted everything from Razorback basketball games to Elvis Presley concerts.

"It's so good to see the parking lot full again," one lady tells me. "We don't see that very often these days."

King Cotton brings people to Pine Bluff during the normally slow holiday season. But the basketball tournament--featuring high school teams from California to Florida--is even more important symbolically. Its successful return sends a message to the rest of the state that Pine Bluff is back. A city's rebirth isn't accomplished overnight, certainly not in a place like Pine Bluff, which has been in decline for decades. Yet the signs of a resurgence are everywhere.

This newspaper featured a story last Sunday about the construction of a state-of-the-art library downtown. Combined with the development of a large aquatics center, there's $22 million in construction activity taking place right now in downtown Pine Bluff. If things go as planned, the Quapaw tribe soon will break ground on a casino resort that's expected to cost more than $200 million. Meanwhile, developers are raising funds to renovate the Hotel Pines, which would represent yet another multimillion-dollar investment downtown.

Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington describes it as being "almost like a domino effect." She says she speaks on a daily basis with people who have returned to Pine Bluff after years away.

"We're building the city up one storefront at a time," Washington says.

The week prior to King Cotton, hundreds of Pine Bluff residents packed a theater to view a new downtown master plan.

"Downtown is the front porch of any town," Steve Luoni of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center told those in attendance. "You want a bustling downtown, a business district that's a regional anchor. ... There's no other town with the historic character and scale that can deliver the kind of services downtown Pine Bluff wants to deliver."

Luoni cited an 1899 study on black wealth that ranked Pine Bluff fourth nationally behind Charleston, S.C., Richmond, Va., and New York.

"Pine Bluff at one point was working for everybody," Luoni said. "It was an amazing city that not only had a fantastic urban environment but had a great building fabric, great streets, public transit. It was one of about 12 Arkansas cities to have streetcars, which were a real benchmark of vanity. It had walkable neighborhoods where all of the central services were available within a half mile. You could walk anywhere in Pine Bluff and access central services. You had residential neighborhoods in downtown that supported the commercial district. You had warehouses. You had a fully functioning city."

In 1918, downtown Pine Bluff had seven to 10 housing units per acre. It's now less than one unit per acre.

"The planning needs to be focused on a small area, bringing the downtown back," Luoni said. "Because of resource constraints, those resources need to operate in a triage manner where you focus what resources you have on a few select areas. You build a critical mass of housing and surrounding development. That becomes a catalyst for other markets to grow."

He says the new library, the aquatics center, the Jefferson County Courthouse, the Hotel Pines, the Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas, the Pine Bluff Civic Center, the Donald W. Reynolds Community Services Center, the museum in the old depot and Saracen Landing on the banks of Saracen Lake can serve as centers of strength. Investment must then happen around those centers of strength.

"The reason why a lot of downtown revitalizations have failed in the past 40 years is because reinvestment was scattered," Luoni said. "Another mistake that has been made is that American cities have used signature projects to redevelop downtowns. They built casinos, arts centers, museums, convention centers and entertainment complexes as a way of bringing back downtowns, and those things alone will not bring back downtowns. People living downtown is what brings back downtowns."

Luoni hopes to see people living around all of the centers of strength in the years ahead.

"If you really want a successful downtown, build housing with density," he said.

Luoni is talking about courtyard apartments, row housing, duplexes and triplexes. He says one advantage Pine Bluff already has is that the blocks downtown are small and walkable. The dream is to have those blocks filled with cyclists and pedestrians. People will socialize along the streets. Under the plan, every new housing unit will have a porch, balcony or terrace.

There are plenty of Arkansans who say such plans will never become a reality in Pine Bluff. Those same people would have told you a year ago that the King Cotton Classic would never come back.

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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 01/20/2019

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