Playing to strengths
The last time we checked in with Gary Brinkley back in January, the Arkadelphia city manager was attempting to inject some fresh thinking into my beloved but often cliquish hometown. Brinkley spent almost two decades as the general manager of Stockyards Station, the shopping and dining component of the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District. He even served as chairman of the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Brinkley first visited Arkadelphia more than a decade ago to bring a daughter to sports camps. He fell in love with the area and decided to apply for the Arkadelphia job when it came open last year.
He has never been able to understand why there aren’t more businesses at the Arkadelphia exit off Interstate 30. It is, after all, about the halfway point between Little Rock and Texarkana. Brinkley told me during our first visit: “We need to be viewed as the best place to stop for people going to and from Texas. I want people going back to Texas and talking about what a great time they had in Arkadelphia. To do that, we must attract quality restaurants, hotels, unique retail experiences.”
In March, when the Arkadelphia Area Chamber of Commerce held its annual banquet, Brinkley announced that a company named Milestone Properties will develop an 81-room Fairfield Inn & Suites. To residents of larger towns, that might not seem like a big deal. But Brinkley views it as a start. It’s especially meaningful for a town that has seen hotels go to nearby Caddo Valley. Brinkley believes the Fairfield Inn will be a catalyst for attracting restaurants. He’s still searching, though, for a unique niche that those traveling to and from Texas can’t resist.
“People on Interstate 35 in Texas regularly stop in the town of West for kolaches,” Brinkley says. “We need something along those lines.”
Arkansans have long known Arkadelphia for the peanut and pecan brittle that’s made there. I suggested to Brinkley that an emporium for peanut and pecan products—one that’s visible from the interstate—could be just the draw he’s searching for. Now he must find an entrepreneur to build it.
Brinkley is on the right track. Towns must identify their strengths and then build on those strengths. An asset for Arkadelphia for more than 125 years has been the fact that it’s the home of two four-year institutions of higher education, Henderson State University and Ouachita Baptist University. Yet there are assets on either side of town that Arkadelphia has never capitalized on; assets that could lead to growth in an area of the state where most counties are losing population.
One untapped asset is the city’s strategic location on Interstate 30. On the other side of town, the asset is Arkadelphia’s position on the Ouachita River. This is where the river begins its transition from a mountain stream to a slower-moving lowland stream. It was the river that gave Arkadelphia, which has served as the Clark County seat since 1842, its birth.
“On a bluff overlooking the Ouachita River from the west, William Blakeley built a blacksmith shop and home in 1808,” historian and Ouachita faculty member Ray Granade writes. “A few years later, a salt works (which some call Arkansas Territory’s first industry) was operating across the river, and a trading post stood near the boat landing. A decade later, Blakeleytown was thriving. … Blakeleytown became Arkadelphia. The name’s originator and precise date of origin are lost. Later accounts agree that early settler James Trigg reported, without attribution, that when Arkadelphia became the county seat and thus needed a more dignified name, locals combined two Greek words for ‘arc of brotherhood’ and changed the third letter. However, many settlers came from Alabama and perhaps borrowed the name of Arkadelphia from a town north of Birmingham.”
As is the case with a number of other river towns across Arkansas, Arkadelphia has turned its back on the river for decades. A riverfront park was built with funds received following the March 1, 1997, tornado that devastated much of downtown. That park has never hosted as many events as it should. Work is now being completed on a new bridge over the Ouachita River.
Arkadelphia Mayor James Calhoun invited me to join him for lunch to discuss efforts to save the old bridge, which the Arkansas Department of Transportation will give to the city. That bridge, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2006, is what’s known as a Parker through truss bridge. The trusses were manufactured in 1933 by the Luten Bridge Co. and first were used on the U.S. 67 bridge over the Caddo River between Arkadelphia and Caddo Valley. That bridge was disassembled in the 1950s. The trusses were stored and used to build the Ouachita River bridge in 1960.
The new bridge will serve the many log trucks that are expected once a $1.8 billion pulp mill is built south of Arkadelphia by a Chinese-owned company. Calhoun and other civic leaders want the old bridge used for hikers and bicyclists. There’s already a small park on the other side of the river. The state will give the city the $160,000 that it would cost to demolish the old bridge. The city needs another $600,000 for additional work to transform the span for pedestrians and cyclists. City officials are looking for public and private grants to finish the work. With a river on one side and an interstate highway on the other, Arkadelphia is at last playing to its strengths.