Arkansas is calling

The first time I was made aware of April’s total solar eclipse was during a 2021 trip to De Queen. On that trip, I visited with civic leaders like Suzanne Babb and Patrick Massey about planning that was already taking place. They were focused on an event that was almost three years away.

The eclipse is expected to last for 4:19 in Sevier County, about the longest in the country.

“If it’s anything like Wyoming in 2017, we can expect more than 50,000 visitors from all over the world to descend on our county,” Jay Bunyard, owner of the local radio stations, told me at the time. “That’s why we’re doing our planning early.”

We’re only two months away, and the folks in De Queen tell me they’re ready. The April 8 solar eclipse will be a huge generator of tourism dollars for De Queen and other cities in southwest Arkansas. My question is whether those communities are prepared to capitalize over the long term on an even more important thing: the explosive growth of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Demographers expect the DFW Metroplex to surpass Chicago by the end of this decade as the nation’s third-largest metropolitan area. A lot of the people moving to Texas are high-income individuals with plenty of funds for travel. Many of them love outdoor recreation: camping, floating, mountain streams, hiking, cycling, rock climbing, bird watching, hunting and fishing. The Ouachita Mountains of southwest Arkansas offer all of that within an easy drive of the Metroplex.

“It has been a big year for big finance in Dallas, where three of Wall Street’s largest banks started work on new campuses, cementing their bets on one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in one of the fastest-growing states,” Shelly Hagan wrote in December for Bloomberg News. “The industry’s rapid Texas expansion since the onset of the pandemic means the area now has more finance workers than Chicago or Los Angeles, trailing only New York.

“And it isn’t just the major banks. Asset managers of all sizes have been looking to cash in on the influx of wealth and people moving from the coasts to Dallas for cheaper housing and no state income tax. Fisher Investments relocated to suburban Plano from Washington state earlier in 2023, joining asset managers — including Charles Schwab and Canyon Partners — that arrived a few years before.”

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said at the October groundbreaking ceremony for Goldman Sachs Group’s 5,000-employee campus near downtown Dallas: “Right now, the smart money is on Dallas.”

I returned to De Queen in 2022 and asked Bunyard to take me to Hochatown, just across the border in Oklahoma.

In a column headlined “Calling all Texans,” I wrote: “There are billboards everywhere. Even though it’s a weekday and school is back in session, cars with Texas license plates are easy to spot on the narrow highway. It appears the Branson phenomenon — which also took place only a few miles from the Arkansas border — is happening again.

“This time, instead of Midwesterners who flock to Branson, the Hochatown explosion is fueled by visitors from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A summer weekend here can draw as many as 30,000 visitors.

“Traffic backs up for miles on weekends. A temporary stoplight was put up to help control the flow. I pass a casino construction site. It’s next to an RV park where construction workers live. I walk into the Blue Rooster restaurant for lunch. It’s filled with construction workers who are busy building houses along what were once Weyerhaeuser-owned logging roads. They call them ‘cabins,’ but they look like mansions to me. Some have gone up on roads that have yet to be paved. That’s how fast the growth is at Hochatown.”

My question in the column was why these Texans are coming to southeast Oklahoma rather than nearby southwest Arkansas. With all due respect to the Sooner State, the border areas of western Arkansas are more beautiful than southeast Oklahoma. And there’s more to do in Arkansas.

My hope is that visitors who come for the eclipse will see something they like in southwest Arkansas. Those within an easy drive — like DFW residents — might decide to build weekend homes here. In time, they might retire to those weekend homes.

Last Sunday, I wrote about plans to transform Mena into one of the nation’s mountain biking capitals. If the planned lifts up the side of Rich Mountain are built, the area will attract cyclists from across the country. In an era when people can work from most anywhere as long as they have broadband access, avid cyclists might choose to build homes in Arkansas.

Besides outdoor recreational opportunities, there are other things that make places like De Queen and Mena attractive. De Queen, for instance, has a Rotary Club whose charter dates back to 1923, just 18 years after the first Rotary Club formed in Chicago. In October 1923, De Queen was welcomed into Rotary International. The De Queen club has sponsored clubs through the years in Mena, Ashdown and Bryant.

This historic club sponsors an Interact Club for De Queen High School students and a Rotaract Club for University of Arkansas Cossatot Community College students. The Rotary Academic Cup and scholarship to the outstanding member of De Queen High School’s senior class has been presented since 1936. Another tradition that dates back to 1936 is the annual presentation of the Rotary Athletic Cup to the outstanding football player in the senior class. Since 2000, the club has presented the Crystal Award to the outstanding senior female athlete.

On five patriotic holidays each year, club members post more than 250 U.S. flags at locations across Sevier County. The club honors military veterans each fall and has an awards luncheon for law enforcement officials and firefighters in the spring. I spoke to the club last summer as part of its centennial year activities and heard of plans to purchase and install two pieces of all-inclusive playground equipment for Herman Dierks Park in De Queen at a cost of $16,000.

Don’t underestimate the importance of things like strong civic clubs and putting out flags when it comes to attracting retirees.

The thing I keep coming back to, though, is the continued growth of the DFW area for upper-income people, along with their desire to find getaways that are a half-day drive or less from their homes. One can drive from De Queen to Dallas in just more than three hours.

There’s no end in sight to the DFW growth. “The bank build-outs are helping solidify the city’s place as a financial center, overshadowing competitors like Atlanta and Miami,” Hagan wrote. “The rapid migration of people and businesses to Texas has led to a cycle of job creation in construction, restaurants and other industries without direct ties to banking. For now, there are no signs of any slowdown in the Dallas financial sector. Wells Fargo & Co.’s new $500 million campus, which will hold 3,000 workers, is going up in the suburb of Irving. Last fall, Bank of America held a groundbreaking ceremony for its 30-story high-rise less than a mile from Goldman’s new campus.

“Now the country’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, Dallas-Fort Worth surpassed Chicago and Los Angeles during the pandemic to become the No. 2 city for finance jobs. It’s home to more than 380,000 people who work in the industry, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares with 323,000 in Chicago. New York is still No. 1 with 809,000 employed in that sector.”

Finance firms occupy 28 million square feet of office space in the Dallas area. Combined with the insurance industry, the sector accounts for 12% of all commercial real estate space.

Looking to escape the traffic and congestion, at least on weekends? Look to southwest Arkansas. Come for the solar eclipse in April. Then come back and build a home. Enjoy the mountains. Enjoy the hiking and cycling trails. Enjoy the fishing in lakes such as Millwood, Greeson, Gillham, De Queen and Dierks. Paddle the Cossatot River. Flyfish for trout below Narrows Dam. Arkansas is calling.