SHERIDAN — A nine-month process saw some fruition recently when Kick Start Sheridan unveiled its action plan to the community at Oak Hill Farms.
“It has been a culmination of months of assessing where we are and where we want to go,” said Lauren Goins, communications chair for Kick Start Sheridan. “We had a community survey, public meetings with residents of our community and understanding what they want now and into the future.”
Kick Start Sheridan involves a partnership with the University of Central Arkansas Center for Community and Economic Development and the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. The initiative has worked with community leaders to develop a community that will attract people of all ages to live, work and play.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson applauded the city’s efforts in “moving in the right direction.”
“I’ve always known Sheridan as a great place to live and a good school system,” Hutchinson said.
“There is a challenge in today’s world in making sure you are growing in the right direction. … Hopefully, you can build on this foundation, and a year from now and beyond, you can look back and say, ‘We accomplished the objectives we set out to do, and we moved our city in the right direction,” he said.
“It was a celebration to conclude our planning process and reveal our strategic plan to the community,” Goins said.
Kick Start Sheridan has five committees, including downtown development, recreation and things to do, education and economic development, small-business development and entrepreneurship, and infrastructure. Goins said the initiative came up with those five committees based on the responses from its community survey, “where we asked our residents what is the most important to them.”
“Our overall goal is for Sheridan, Grant County and the Yellow Jacket Nation to be an even better place to live, work and play,” Goins said. “We are actually in a really good position because we have so much momentum going with our school district building three new state-of-the art facilities, and real estate agents telling us that more and more people are looking at Sheridan to raise their families.
“We have different organizations and groups of people coming together to make sure we grow in the right way and make our community an even better place.”
Brad McGinley, one of the co-chairs for Kick Start Sheridan, said the Little Rock metropolitan area has grown in every direction, including Benton and Bryant, Searcy, Conway and Cabot, but now it is starting to grow toward Sheridan.
“It has been nothing but positive,” McGinley said. “The whole community has really come behind and kind of come together to work in a way that is really positive.”
McGinley said one thing he wanted to make clear is that it just wasn’t a group of leaders developing a plan for what they thought was good for the community but, instead, was based on the community’s input that drove the action plan.
Justin Wise, who serves as chairman for the Parks and Recreation Committee, said the biggest thing he has seen is the amount of volunteers showing up for the different committees.
“One of the chairs earlier made the comment that the volunteers who are coming out and participating in the committee are not the people you generally see volunteering for everything,” Wise said. “They are brand-new folks who are coming out of the woodwork. We have brand-new volunteers stepping up, including young volunteers.”
One of the first short-term goals for Kick Start Sheridan has already been accomplished with the introduction of Movies at the Park. The first movie featured was Mary Poppins Returns on May 25. Wise said he hopes to show a movie every month, as long as the weather cooperates.
“The community met it with such excitement; the number of engagements was overwhelming,” Wise said. “We were pulling folks from Little Rock, but also Pine Bluff, White Hall, Benton and Bryant, through our engagements on social media.
“That’s how we knew it was going to be popular.”
Goins said accomplishing some of these “quick wins” has encouraged other people to volunteer and “see that we are not all talk.”
“That’s one thing we tried to incorporate,” McGinley said, “because when you think strategic-planning process, it’s long term — it’s meeting and discussing.
“By establishing these smaller goals, we can make a plan and take action immediately and accomplish some of those along the way.”
Wise said the recreation and things to do committee is working on an 8-mile bike route so that people can cycle through downtown Sheridan and outlying neighborhoods.
The downtown development committee organized a cleanup day, and Goins said Kick Start Sheridan also put together a career fair, partnering with Sheridan High School.
“We also have a community theater, and its first play, Peter Pan, will be later this fall, and we’ll have multiple fundraisers leading up to it,” Wise said. “We also have a farmers market — that was a long-term project that is becoming a short-term project because it is ahead of schedule.
“We hope to have that pretty soon.”
Goins said there will be a fall festival that will be downtown and will feature local businesses and faith-based organizations that currently do trunk-or-treats and provide a safe atmosphere for entertainment.
“We want to expand and provide high-quality early child care,” Goins said. “Currently, Sheridan does not have a child care facility for children under 2, so we want to provide more of those opportunities that not only help us give children the best start for their education and for parents who need or want to go to work — it gives them a place to send their children as well.”
Goins said that eventually, Kick Start Sheridan would also like to add an after-school program for the city, much like a Boys & Girls Club.
“There’s a lot of community pride here,” Goins said.
Sheridan is right on track for possibly the greatest transformation the community has ever seen, Goins said.
“I know we will succeed because I see you all working together to create a better tomorrow. … None of these accomplishments could have been possible without strong partnerships,” Goins said. “We already have the foundation in place to build a brighter future.”
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.