I'm looking down at the giant slab of ham on my plate at Neal's Cafe and thinking of old versus new in Springdale.
Neal's, which has been around 77 years and is in its fourth generation of family ownership, represents the old Springdale. It's still a wonderful place to have a meal. Painted bright pink, the building on Thompson Street has long been a community gathering place. In fact, the group I refer to as "the coffee drinkers" is at the table near the fireplace on this morning.
Toy and Bertha Neal started serving patrons in 1944. Their specialties were fried chicken cooked in iron skillets, and homemade pies.
When the restaurant celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2014, Christie Swanson wrote in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "Folks in northwest Arkansas can get more than just a home-cooked meal at Neal's Cafe. They can also get a political lecture, the lowdown on Razorback football or brilliant marital advice. Just ask the regulars sitting at that long table by the fireplace drinking coffee every morning.
"Neal's Cafe, the place where it seems everyone goes to find out what's really happening in these parts ... remains one of those places where people gather day after day to socialize, complain, cajole and joke with friends. ... The walls carry Neal family mementos spanning four generations, including mounted elk and antelope heads from hunting trips and a World War II Japanese gun."
The couple bought 40 acres that at the time were outside city limits. They sold off parcels through the years. The original building was torn down in 1963 to make way for a widening project on Thompson Street. Pink was Bertha Neal's favorite color and was chosen for the replacement building.
The night before, I had dined just down the street at another Arkansas classic, the AQ Chicken House. Roy Ritter founded it in July 1947, three years after Neal's opened its doors. At the time, half a cooked chicken cost 65 cents, and it was 5 cents for a cup of coffee. The chickens were raised and slaughtered just behind the restaurant. AQ stood for Arkansas Quality.
Ritter was one of the first people to build large poultry houses in northwest Arkansas. Vice President Alben Barkley showed up to eat there in 1952, President Bill Clinton visited in 1998 while in the region, and George W. Bush was served AQ chicken on his plane following a campaign stop. In 1966, AQ even shipped 400 chicken dinners to Miss Universe contestants and officials.
Springdale has changed a lot through the decades, making it all the more remarkable that Neal's and AQ are still there.
In last Saturday's column, I wrote about the new Springdale, including a burgeoning medical corridor along Interstate 49. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is spending $13.6 million to purchase 31.2 acres in that corridor for an orthopedic and sports medicine center.
The $85 million facility will have 185,000 square feet of space. It will be built just south of Arkansas Children's Northwest. That pediatric hospital opened in 2018, and the medical corridor has been growing ever since.
If the city's leaders play their cards correctly, they can integrate old and new Springdale. No place better represents the ability to do that than the Jones Center, which has a 52-acre campus on East Emma Avenue.
Harvey Jones founded a company in 1918 with two mules and a wagon to haul goods to Springdale, Fayetteville and Rogers. Jones Truck Lines would go on to become one of the largest privately owned trucking companies in the country. Harvey and his wife Bernice also became two of the state's top philanthropists.
Harvey died in 1989, and the company that had purchased JTL entered bankruptcy. Bernice dreamed of building a community center in Springdale where families could come together.
Bernice formed the Jones Trust in 1994, and in July of that year she transferred the deed for the former JTL terminal on Emma to the Harvey and Bernice Jones Center for Families Inc. The Jones Center opened in 1995 with a chapel and meeting rooms. The following year, an ice rink, food court and additional meeting rooms were added.
In February 1997, an adjacent facility known as the JTL Shops opened to house dozens of nonprofit institutions. That same year, H.G. "Jack" Frost Jr. was fired as Bernice Jones' accountant. In 1999, he was indicted on 71 counts and accused of stealing more than $1 million from the trust. Frost later was convicted on 69 counts.
By 2000, the Jones Center was closing two days a week due to budget shortfalls.
Bernice Jones died in 2003. By 2011, the boards of the Jones Center and Jones Trust had been combined, a strategic plan was completed, and the center began charging for memberships. A 2020 Walton Family Foundation design excellence grant paid for a redesign of the campus. Last month, those plans were revealed.
There will be an expanded bike park, native prairie plants, a children's playground modeled after geological formations in the Ozarks, a dog park, areas for fitness activities, a food court and shade shelters. The work of local artists will be utilized throughout the campus.
The people who worked for JTL were the kind of blue-collar folks who filled Neal's and AQ in those restaurants' early years. Springdale was a blue-collar town, after all. That's changing, but for now the city seems to be getting the mix of old and new about right. I suggest breakfast at Neal's, a tour of the medical corridor and then lunch at AQ.
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.