When Californian Don Weatherman arrived at Lyon College for the first time in 1983, he was told that Batesville had a population of about 10,000. More than three decades later, it still does.
The population may be the only thing stagnant in the seat of Independence County. Fresh eyes, strategic planning, youthful energy and cold, hard cash are shaking up a college town on the jagged edge of the Ozarks that is burdened with many of the same challenges as the Delta that’s just minutes away.
“We know what a diamond in the rough we are,” Robb Roberts, executive vice president of locally owned First Community Bank and chairman of the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce, said last week.
There are signs of change all over town. In the historic downtown of the state’s oldest city:
- The historic Melba Theater reopened last month in the 100 block of West Main Street;
- A block to the east, build-out is in full swing on an honest-to-goodness bar and lounge called 109 Main — a private club that will remain so since a dry-to-wet initiative failed to get on the November ballot;
- The first new building on Main Street in decades, The Pinto restaurant, opened for coffee last week and will start serving full meals this week; and
- The Batesville Public Library is preparing to quadruple its size by moving from a 112-year-old building on Main Street to a building a couple of blocks west that is a year older.
On the south side of town, near the White River that first brought settlers to the area, a state-of-the-art treatment facility that was dedicated in June doubled the city's maxed-out wastewater capacity, creating the opportunity to expand the poultry industry that has been an industrial mainstay.
And a sprawling $28 million community center and water park — what Mayor Rick Elumbaugh called the "sexy" project — should be complete by year's end.
Some of these projects were well underway by the time the Batesville Chamber rolled out a strategic plan called "Impact Independence County," a 40-page wish list (PDF) that was the result of blanketing the county with surveys. The strategic plan for economic development, tourism, educational excellence and healthy living was the brainchild of last year's chamber chairman, Phil Baldwin.
Baldwin moved to Independence County at the end of 2013 to execute growth plans for Citizens Bank, the smaller of the two Batesville-chartered banks. The former CEO of Southern Bancorp of Arkadelphia, a rural development bank with nonprofit affiliates, had used similar tools to create a strategic plan for Clark County and the Delta Bridge Project for Phillips and Mississippi counties in Arkansas and Coahoma County, Mississippi.
Without hiring a consultant but with models from other communities, the chamber partnered with Lyon College, where Weatherman returned as president in 2009, and the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville to produce the strategic plan. (See Education a Cornerstone of Batesville's Strategic Plan.)
Before the ideas were committed to paper, "There wasn't really any vision for the community," said Crystal Johnson, the chamber's president and CEO. Now community leaders refer to Impact the way preachers refer to the Good Book, and it helped the chamber win a two-part grant totaling $67,000 from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation of Little Rock.
That money, in turn, is being divided into "mini-grants" to organizations that pledge to use the money to benefit low- and moderate-income residents, which are targeted by many of the 168 goals included in the Impact plan.
The goals are "all very achievable by 2020," Johnson said, and some of them have already been achieved. For example: hiring someone to promote tourism, something Johnson and chamber COO Jamie Rayford don’t have time to do as well as it needs to be done.
The Batesville Area Chamber receives no tax dollars and the city does not (yet) have a local-option advertising and promotion tax, but Kyle Christopher was hired two months ago as tourism director with seed money from a fundraiser at the chamber's annual meeting.
While other parts of Arkansas have been laser-focused on promoting their attractions, Batesville hasn't even had a brochure available at state tourism information centers.
"That's such a little thing," Weatherman said, "but it's a thousand little things."
Private Investments
Citizens Bank announced in April a $10 million, low-interest loan program specifically for investments in downtown Batesville. It also set aside $100,000 for small grants of about $5,000 each, and six of those have been made so far.
One was used to replace windows in the 231 E. Main St. building that houses Elizabeth’s Restaurant & Catering. One paid for the patio seating at The Pinto, the new rock building that Haley and Brice Stephens built from scratch on the vacant southeast corner of Main Street and Central Avenue with help from local architect Zack Mobley.
“We’ve been talking about this for probably 10 years,” Haley said last Monday, the last day of preparation before the soft opening.
The Pinto will compete with Big’s, a lunch spot directly across Main Street, where business has picked up since Joe and Janelle Shell and Mandi and Adam Curtwright put $650,000 and almost as much in sweat equity into reopening The Melba a half-block away.
The theater — exact age unclear, Joe Shell said — opened with a black-tie screening of “The Wizard of Oz” on Aug. 12. The Melba had been in almost continual operation since the 1940s, when its few African-American patrons had to use a separate entrance to climb stairs to the segregated balcony, but it had been closed for several months when the Shells and Curtwrights bought it in March 2015.
With the help of John Greer Jr. of WER Architects of Little Rock, the new owners tackled a labor-intensive renovation that included reupholstering the 414 orchestra seats. Janelle Shell’s father sanded and refinished every wooden armrest, a gleam that competes with the brass plates on the chair backs from a community fundraiser for the project called “Save Your Seat.”
Cliff Brown, who works for Baldwin at Citizens Bank, has teamed up with Chintan Patel, owner of the U.S. Pizza franchise in Batesville, to open 109 Main. Brown said he hoped the bar and lounge, modeled after places the partners visited in bigger cities, would help kickstart nightlife in Batesville.
Brown and Patel chose one of the last vacant storefronts on historic Main, which is being narrowed to a single westbound lane in order to slow traffic. But the hopes of city boosters were smashed last month when a petition to put a dry-to-wet initiative on the November ballot failed by fewer than 400 signatures.
Under a 2015 state law that also frustrated efforts in Randolph County, one invalid signature can disqualify an entire page of voter signatures. (Among the signatures thus invalidated in Independence County: Mayor Elumbaugh’s and that of Robb Roberts, the chamber chairman.)
Public Investments
The wastewater treatment plant that was completed earlier this year had been in the works since a 1 percent sales tax was approved by city voters in 2009, creating vast new capacity for industrial users.
But wastewater holding ponds aren’t as sexy as the “lazy river” water feature at the new community center whose delayed opening is now expected by yearend.
“Nobody ever asked me when the treatment plant would be finished, but people ask me all the time when the community center will be ready,” Mayor Elumbaugh said.
The community center — 105,000 SF under roof, plus a 40,000-SF water park — was designed by ETC Engineers of Little Rock, and the contractor is G.A.G. Builders of Cabot. The gymnasium, big enough for three basketball courts or six volleyball games, can also be used for trade shows or banquets, and that will take some of the pressure off the UA Community College, the go-to place for large gatherings in Batesville.
The community center — Batesville Parks & Recreation Director Jeff Owens says naming rights are still available — is being paid for by a dedicated 1 percent sales tax approved by voters in 2012, half of which will sunset after paying for the construction.
The Batesville Public Library, supported by a 1-mill property tax, got a new director in April, Vanessa Adams. She is overseeing the move from a 5,000-SF historic building on Main Street to a 21,000-SF space being renovated down the street.
The library is among the recipients of a mini-grant from the Rockefeller Foundation: $3,750 for three computers for use by children.
The library currently has five computers, and Adams says it needs about 20. The new space will have room for more computers, programs, even book club meetings.
Younger Residents
Crystal Johnson said Batesville’s stagnant population — not dwindling like many communities in the Delta to the east but not growing like Conway or northwest Arkansas — was a “call to action.”
But the area is already attracting newer residents, like Baldwin and chamber director Carter Ford, a former aide to Gov. Mike Beebe who has opened a State Farm insurance agency in Batesville. Natives are also returning, like the Stephenses at The Pinto and Johnson’s husband, Damon.
The younger faculty members that Weatherman recruits to Lyon College like the idea of living in the historic houses downtown, where many of the residents are under 50.
“Almost every single week, a new millenial family moves to Batesville,” Ford said. “To find arts, to find diversity, you have to move to a large city — Impact proved that wrong,” Ford said.