MOVES ON MAIN

Russellville’s downtown district celebrates 25 years of revitalization

Downtown Russellville represents different aspects to residents – a historical area, a social place where people gather to celebrate events, or an ideal setting for a leisurely stroll.

In the fall of 1991, a group of concerned community members decided to develop Main Street Russellville in an effort to reignite the area through the National Main Street Program’s revitalization plan. Since the organization’s official beginning in 1992, Main Street Russellville has seen many accomplishments.

The 25-year anniversary of Main Street Russellville allowed Executive Director Betsy McGuire to reflect on the effect the program has had on downtown. McGuire said the organization kept the Pope County Courthouse and Russellville City Hall downtown despite a small push to get the buildings moved. She also mentioned the rehabilitation of the historic J.L. Shinn building in 1996 and events such as the annual Taste of the Valley and Downtown Fall

Festival & Chili Cookoff, as well as the development of Burris Memorial Plaza. One of these projects included work on the city’s train depot.

“The rehabilitation of Russellville’s historic train depot and the subsequent development of Depot Park has provided our community with the town square that Russellville never had before,” McGuire said.

She said there have been general improvements to the Main Street area, too.

Streetscape improvements on Main Street — new benches, trash receptacles, new ShopDine-Unwind banners and even the El Paso Corridor ‘Complete Street Project,’ which was the development of a corridor along El Paso Avenue between downtown and Arkansas Tech University — are the result of ongoing partnerships with the city, the county, the Chamber of Commerce and Arkansas Tech University, McGuire said.

She said the former Bank of Russellville was turned into The Old Bank Sports Grill, one of six downtown eateries that help keep Russellville’s downtown area “alive after five.”

The organization was recently recognized by the National Main Street Center and Main Street Arkansas, Main Street Russellville’s coordinating program, as an accredited program. The annual accreditation is based on meeting the standards of performance for Main Street America. McGuire said the accreditation is important to the ongoing success of the local program and helps validate the work the organization does.

For the future, McGuire said Main Street Russellville has put a new plan in place with hopes to continue to improve the community.

“We recently completed a five-year update of the Downtown Master Plan. That plan was initially developed through community input in 2012. The five-year update is designed to work hand in hand with the city’s comprehensive plan and with Arkansas Tech’s plans for the El Paso Corridor,” she said. “Recommended projects include, but are not limited to, ongoing rehabilitation of downtown buildings, infill construction on vacant lots, addressing downtown parking and creating gateway treatments. Other significant projects include development of the Prairie Creek Greenway through downtown and the expansion and relocation of the Pope County Library to a more centralized location in the downtown district. Our plans for the future continue to be the combined hopes and dreams of those individuals in the past, the present and the future, who dream of a better future for our community.”