Bill Rogers and I go back at least four decades. He was working in the sports information department at the University of Arkansas and I was a sportswriter when we first met.
On this day, Rogers is driving me around Springdale. I didn't spend any time in northwest Arkansas from March 2020 until late this spring when my family was fully vaccinated. It's amazing what can happen in a year.
Rogers and I dine at the venerable Susan's, where the menu still advertises what it calls the Chickendale specials. That's a nod to what I consider the old Springdale, back when it was best known as the home of Tyson Foods and other poultry producers.
Chickendale may have started as a derogatory description, but Springdale residents now take pride in the moniker, just as North Little Rock residents eventually came to take pride in their city being called Dogtown.
Fayetteville has the University of Arkansas along with artists and musicians. It's Arkansas' much smaller version of Austin. Rogers has the glitz along what's now Interstate 49. Bentonville has Walmart and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Springdale was viewed as the ethnic, blue-collar brother to those three cities. Yet the growth here has been remarkable. In the 1960 census, Springdale had just 10,076 residents. By 1970, there were 16,406 people living here. The population then went to 23,458 in 1980; 29,941 in 1990; 45,798 in 2000; 69,787 in 2010; and about 82,000 these days.
What we once thought of as an industrial and agricultural city is home to a growing medical corridor along the interstate and an increasingly hip downtown district.
"Arvest Ballpark opened in 2008 with all of this open land around it," Rogers says. "Then the Great Recession came along and things slowed. You knew it eventually was going to be developed, and that's happening."
Rogers grew up at Monticello in south Arkansas and spent 17 years helping handle media relations for Razorback teams. He joined the Springdale Chamber of Commerce in 1998 and became the organization's president and chief executive officer at the first of this year following the retirement of Perry Webb.
The job doesn't turn over often. The chamber had just two presidents the previous 55 years.
Here are a few of the things we saw:
• The transformation of the Ryan's Building location downtown by a subsidiary of the Walton family. There will be 20,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the ground level, and 55 apartment units, thus increasing residential density downtown.
• The nearby Little Emma development, which has 2,500 square feet of retail and office space on the first floor and 26 residential units on the second floor. Apartments vary in size from 500 to 850 square feet.
• The five-story Highlands Oncology headquarters in the medical corridor, a $30 million investment that covers 125,000 square feet. The center includes 48 infusion chairs, 34 exam rooms and a research center.
• A four-story, 80,000-square-foot office building in the medical corridor that will house about 300 employees of Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield and its subsidiaries.
• The Center for Children's Health & Wellness in the medical corridor, a five-story, 80,000-square-foot facility on a seven-acre site. It cost almost $15 million.
• Arkansas Children's Northwest, the area's first children's hospital. It anchors the medical corridor and opened in February 2018. The hospital was built on 37 acres donated by Robin and Gary George, Cathy and David Evans, and their families. The 234,000-square-foot facility opened with a pediatric surgery unit with five operating rooms, a full range of diagnostic and ancillary services, outdoor gardens, nature trails and a helipad. Just more than three years after opening, I'm told that expansion plans already are being discussed.
• The future 64,000-square-foot home of Williams Tractor and Freedom Power Sports, which is on a 20-acre tract.
• The Pure Springdale apartment complex. Sixteen three-story buildings will contain 234 units at an estimated cost of $22 million. The 13.7-acre site will feature walking trails, three ponds, a resort-style swimming pool, a fitness center, a business center, a gated dog park and outdoor gathering areas.
• A 460-unit apartment development known as the Trails at the Crossings. It covers 22 acres with a clubhouse, fitness center, swimming pool, dog park and walking trails.
• The $12 million, 38,000-square-foot Springdale campus of Northwest Arkansas Community College, which opened in December 2019.
• The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's J.B. and Johnelle Hunt Ozark Highlands Nature Center, a $20 million project covering 61 acres.
• The site of an 87-room Holiday Inn Express on Sunset Avenue that will cost $6.3 million.
• The Springdale School District's Don Tyson School of Innovation. The first phase, which opened in the fall of 2014 with its first class of eighth-grade students, cost $24 million and covered 145,000 square feet. The recently completed second phase cost $35 million.
This just scratches the surface. It doesn't include the parks and road projects Rogers outlined for me. Downtown, for instance, 15-acre Luther George Park will feature a performance atrium, playgrounds for all ages and access to the banks of Spring Creek. It also doesn't include housing developments we drove through in northwest Springdale.
"We've continued to see monthly sales tax growth during the pandemic," Rogers says. "We estimate there have been 3,700 jobs added in Springdale alone since 2016."
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.