Arkansas-side workshop focuses on beautification goals

Making Texarkana, Ark., more inviting to businesses and their customers was the topic of a workshop meeting held Thursday by the city Planning Commission.

Over lunch in the City Hall board room, commissioners and officials discussed beautification goals for the city with an eye toward eventually revising appearance codes.

Taking a fresh look at issues like signage, landscaping, power line placement, screening and fencing should be seen as a positive for all involved, Planner Mary Beck said.

“This is very pro-business. It might seem difficult to have change at times, but all of us know, when we’re driving down a street in a strange town, and we see a nice, landscaped business, and the one next to it that’s the opposite of that, we’re probably going to turn in to the one that looks like it’s well taken care of. So this is going to benefit the business owners,” she said.

Efforts should focus on the major roads to downtown, including State Line Avenue and Highways 67, 71 and 82, Public Works Director Jeff Whitten said, referring to maps that showed various streets’ average traffic counts.

“What I would like to see us do, or think about, is to start to look at some ordinances that really deal with how do we change citywide, but with some emphasis also placed on where are the highest traffic counts, where are people coming through the city,” he said.

Beck agreed. “The high-traffic areas are really the ideal target for what we’re doing, because those are the businesses that have the most opportunity to increase their sales, to increase their commerce,” she said.

The group reached consensus that any zoning changes must not be too burdensome to business owners, and they probably will include “grandfather” provisions that exempt existing businesses, at least partially.

“I’m not looking to put standards in place that will just run development off from our side of town. … But I would love to see some upgrades, some standards, some things improved,” Whitten said. “I’m not suggesting that we make things so rigid that we can’t adapt. I’m just saying you’ve got to have a starting point.”

Future workshops will focus on specific zoning topics like open storage and outdoor display standards, architecture and site plan requirements, and off-street loading.