Pam Griffin is busy as I enter her office in downtown El Dorado on a rainy spring morning. Griffin, CEO of the Murphy Arts District, is about to announce that Willie Nelson will play the 8,000-seat MAD Amphitheater on June 22. She knows ticket sales will be brisk.
Griffin, a Hope native who graduated from Louisiana Tech University, is a CPA who spent 11 years in public accounting in Little Rock before working for other private companies. When south Arkansas business and civic leaders formed El Dorado Festivals & Events Inc. (MAD's parent organization), she became part of an initiative designed to revitalize this part of the state.
El Dorado Festivals & Events is a nonprofit entity that does business as MAD. It operates not only the MAD Amphitheater but also the 2,000-seat First Financial Music Hall and a large children's play area known as the MAD Playscape. Voters in El Dorado helped fund MAD with passage of two sales taxes. Millions of dollars in private capital was raised. Meanwhile, the El Dorado Advertising & Promotion Commission supported marketing efforts.
In a 2019 interview for Block, Street & Building, Griffin (who started as MAD's chief financial officer) was asked her advice for communities developing entertainment and arts districts. She answered: "Be willing to be flexible in your ambitions. As the project evolves, new conditions will emerge. The ultimate result of the project may look different from the original plan. Additionally, ensure that you and your team are committed to thinking big and owning the tiny details."
Little did Griffin realize just how flexible she would have to be.
Austin Barrow, who had been with MAD since its inception, announced in 2019 that he was leaving his job as president and chief operating officer to pursue other performing-arts projects. Barrow, an El Dorado native, had been MAD's first employee.
Terry Stewart, MAD's CEO at the time, called Barrow "a visionary who understood the potential of arts and entertainment to positively impact the economic vitality of El Dorado. Austin was instrumental in the conception of the project as well as leading the organization during the construction phase. He has tirelessly carried our message at the state and city levels."
In March 2020, a worldwide pandemic that no one saw coming shut down MAD programming.
Then, in August 2020, Stewart announced he was stepping down. Stewart, the former CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the shores of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, is a south Alabama native who understands the rural South and was excited by the opportunity to help transform a city and maybe even an entire region of a state by improving quality of life. He headed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from 1999 until 2013.
Prior to that, Stewart was president and COO of comic-book company Marvel Entertainment Group. Marvel became a public company in 1991, and Stewart was named that year by CNBC as its Marketing Executive of the Year.
Following Stewart's retirement, Griffin was promoted once more. No longer was she just the bean-counter. She now had to also be the visionary.
"There were a lot of prayers and just taking it day by day during the pandemic," Griffin says. "I stayed up to speed on various government stimulus programs we could utilize. Each day was spent tracking the latest developments and figuring out what those developments meant to our future.
"The slowdown did something else for us. It gave us a chance to re-evaluate our business model. We were forced to become a leaner, more efficient organization. And that's a good thing. Sustainability is my goal for MAD. The things we're doing now will ensure that we're still around 15 years from now."
Entertainment events slowly began returning in March 2021 after a year in which the amphitheater and First Financial Music Hall were dark. These days, it's full speed ahead. On the walls of her office, Griffin has huge calendars to track upcoming events. Those include everything from concerts to weekly farmers' markets to Monday movies at the amphitheater to trivia nights at MuleKick, a restaurant in the Griffin Building.
"We're booking shows six to 12 months out," Griffin says. "We also host high school proms and weddings. As we looked to save on expenses, our offices moved out of the bank building we were in and into the bottom of the Griffin Building. That proved to be another wise move since the whole staff now gets to be in the middle of things. We're again providing a well-rounded menu of arts and entertainment."
The first MAD shows were held in late September 2017. I wrote earlier that year: "More than 96 years since the oil boom began, workers in hardhats fill the streets of downtown El Dorado. The sounds of heavy construction echo around the Union County Courthouse square. It's as if a second oil boom is taking place. But this has nothing to do with the oil and gas industry. Instead, it's about music, theater, art and even fine food and wines.
"It's an audacious effort by the city's business leaders to reverse a decades-long pattern of population decline. The goal is to turn El Dorado into the arts and entertainment capital of a region that includes south Arkansas, north Louisiana, east Texas and even part of west Mississippi. Many consider it to be El Dorado's last, best chance to break out of the economic doldrums infecting so much of south Arkansas."
More than $60 million was raised for the first phase of construction. A pandemic derailed things, but MAD appears to be back on track.
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.