Out with the old
One of the first businesses in Bella Vista opened in July 1971. The building was scheduled to be demolished last week, within just a few days of the original owner’s death.
When it opened, the service station was the only building in Town Center and it was just off the two-lane road that would become Highway 71. At that time, the service station was level with the road, and a stop sign controlled the intersection where Highway 340 crossed, according to a 2001 story. When 71 expanded into a four-lane road, it was lowered so 340 could cross above.
The station’s first owner, Jim Thompson, died on Christmas Eve this year. He came from a family with experience in service stations. His father ran the service station in Cherokee Village, the first community opened by John Cooper Sr. before Bella Vista.
Thompson’s daughter, Jody Latham, remembers seeing the new building framed in one Sunday before heading to church. There was a windstorm and, when the family got home from church, the building was gone.
“Bella Vista was so different back then,” Latham said. “There were so many tourists coming in.” She remembers crossing the highway on foot to eat at the Burger Barn.
Cooper Communities brought the tourists in to see the community and everyone — tourists and salesmen — bought their gas at Village Mobile. When Latham was 15 years old, she went to work for Cooper Communities. She still works today as the president of Cooper Land Development.
Jim Thompson sold the business to his son, Jimmy Thompson, in 1982 and worked there part-time. When the Daily Record interviewed Jimmy Thompson when the service station celebrated 35 years in 2006, it was still a full-service station.
If customers pulled up to the full-service pump, not only was gas pumped for them, they could also have tire pressure and oil checked and have their windshield cleaned. Thompson said he suspected some of his customers didn’t know how to pump gas.
Thompson closed the station in 2009, the victim of the economic downturn. He had three full-time and two part-time employees.
Over the years, the brand of gasoline changed several times so that Village Mobile became Village 66 and then, finally, Finish Line. When Mount Pleasant Automotive opened a satellite repair shop in the building in 2011, it kept the Finish Line name but did not sell gas. The tank and pumps were removed a few years ago.
Jimmy Thompson is still repairing cars in Bentonville and still sees some of his old Bella Vista customers. But his shop now is smaller and he doesn’t sell gas. And that’s the way he likes it.
“I have a lot of good memories there, but I like it here too,” he said recently. He plans to remain a oneman shop until he retires.
“It’s the end of an era,” Latham said. “It’s sad to see the station go down, but I know we need to get some life in there.”
She said Cooper Communities is interested in selling the property, and it will be more appealing to buyers without the gas station in front. She said there are no plans to raze the rest of the buildings in that section of Town Center.