Kevin Collins Center a source of PB pride

The new council chambers on the bottom floor of the Kevin D. Collins Center can provide a whiplash in a good way when the new facility is compared to the old council chambers. They’re both in the 60-year-old Pine Bluff Civic Center and they’re both more or less underground, so it’s not as if the new facility benefits from big windows like the Pine Bluff Public Library has.

But the two venues are like night and day nonetheless.

The old space is like a large broom closet. Small, cramped, poorly lit, uncomfortable and as a reward for attending a meeting there, one gets to sit on folding metal chairs — and there weren’t many of those.

By comparison, the new council chambers are something to behold, something akin to walking into the Arts & Science Center auditorium. Lots of comfortable, attractive theater seating. Tons of light. Lots of air, which always seemed in short supply at the old digs. Big TV screens so that people in the audience can have a better view of what’s going on, particularly at the podium where speakers face the council. All tricked out with the modern look of wood slats that lend an air of something formal but also inviting.

The center has been pushed by Mayor Shirley Washington, who held Collins in a special place in her heart. He was said to have had that effect on all the people he was around, but Washington spent a lot of time with Collins, who on occasion would drive her to engagements. As she put it once, he took her places in Pine Bluff she didn’t even know existed.

The center will be more than a static meeting room, albeit a nice one, for the council to gather in twice a month. Upstairs, there will be a police training area as well as some information about Collins. As Washington said after last week’s first official city council meeting in the new facility, the center is a work in progress because she’s trying to pay off the improvements as they are made to avoid increasing the city’s debt on the project.

Pine Bluff should be proud of this new space as one would have to look hard around the state to find something more beautiful and pleasant. We also think Collins would appreciate the nod to his memory in the naming of the center. He was a young officer, had only been on the force a few years, but as other more-senior officers have said, his cop prowess was well beyond his age or experience. So it is fitting that future officers for the Pine Bluff Police Department will continue to learn their craft here and be exposed to someone who put it all on the line every day for the citizens of Pine Bluff.