Even the highway to Jonesboro is refreshingly new.
We settled down for a meal in Jonesboro at a fast food joint the kids like. The adults from the other parts of the state marveled about how this town in northeastern Arkansas has changed in the last, oh, 20 years or so. It seems that construction is going on all over. And not dirty construction, with piles of rubble and sheetrock thrown out in front of industrial complexes. But pretty construction. Homes. Gardens. Buildings at the college.
But surely it can't all be explained by Arkansas State University. Jonesboro has been home to ASU for years. Even when Jonesboro was grayer and smaller. But take a drive to that campus when you get a chance. Everything seems newly painted. Not a cigarette butt on the ground. Not a go-cup thrown on the lawn. What, is this a college or a golf course?
We don't know which is the cart, and which is the horse. Is Jonesboro a welcoming, engaging, alluring place because of the college, or is the college attractive because of Jonesboro? Why not both?
We thought about Jonesboro and our recent visit there when we saw Emily Walkenhorst's story on the front page the other day: Arkansas is following a national trend. Rural areas are losing people. The urban areas are gaining.
The Delta is contracting--not the land, but the people. And the counties around Little Rock and the northwestern part of the state are gaining population.
Except Jonesboro. It's the outlier. It's smack-dab in the middle of the Delta, in a rice field no less, and it's booming. What gives?
The little town of Brookland, Ark., a suburb of Jonesboro, saw its population more than double since the last Census, from 1,642 people to 3,491. This while towns all down The River are watching their children leave. You could say Craighead County has the advantage of keeping its young people at ASU, but Pine Bluff and Monticello have colleges, too.
Yet in 2010, the Census Bureau reports that Craighead County had about 96,500 people. That number has increased each year since, to an estimated 108,500 now. Jefferson County, which has UA-Pine Bluff, and Drew County, which has UA-Monticello, have lost people in the last decade.
We're not sure what explains it. But other counties and towns in the Delta need to find out what it is, and try to replicate it. If not bottle it.
A lot of good things--right things--are happening in the middle of a rice field in northeastern Arkansas. People are moving there. Businesses are opening. It's a chamber of commerce dream. Jonesboro is rising.
It's an outlier. But it doesn't have to be.
Editorial on 05/24/2019