Benton developer gives downtown a kick-start.
By Dwain Hebda
It’s not often that someone can be claimed as a favorite son of a community to which they’re not native. But in the case of Michigander Shawn Hipskind, Benton is willing to make an exception.
Hipskind, a serial entrepreneur, moved to Arkansas in 2000. His business interests are varied, having included real estate, construction, development, excavation and even a restaurant and music venue. Now, he can add another title to that distinguished list: catalyst for the rebirth of Benton’s downtown district.
“I see vibrant downtowns as the growth center for the future of communities, as communities with vibrant downtowns are able to keep their college-age students locally instead of them going off to big cities,” Hipskind said.
“Vibrant downtowns are what people want to be near and [where] they want to live by. ”
Hipskind’s march toward downtown’s revival is a study in recognizing opportunity and pivoting to meet it. He was in his residential construction phase when he saw the first hints of the economic meltdown that would land full force in 2008.
“I saw it coming, so I switched over and got my commercial license because the government was going to give away a bunch of shovel-ready projects for commercial contractors,” he said. “We switched over to commercial contracting to avoid going bankrupt, like all my buddies did, in ’08 and ’09.
“I started doing first-time homebuyer homes because they were giving away $12,000 tax credits to first-time homebuyers. I think I sold more houses the first year of the crash than I’ve ever sold in my entire life.”
A decade later, Hipskind and his family were thinking of moving to Northwest Arkansas, but were turned off by the cost of living. That’s when he made a life-altering discovery.
“We researched prices of housing and decided real quick we weren’t moving to Bentonville, but we really liked that downtown town square,” he said. “When we looked around at Benton, we noticed it’s super similar. We’ve got a nice little courthouse, we’ve got a nice little town square, all we needed to do was build it out. It’s just been neglected for 60, 70 years.”
For about $350,000, about the same money commanded by a single fixer-upper in Bentonville, Hipskind bought an entire block of downtown Benton in 2017. He leveled the existing homes on the parcel, replacing them with 14 new ones.
Valhalla Kitchen + Bar; image thanks to Brian Chilson
“Most of the houses didn’t even have floors on the inside,” he said. “When you walked in, the floor systems had totally rotted out straight through to the dirt. Through the crawlspace you could see the ground; when you stepped through the threshold, you stepped onto dirt.”
Today, Hipskind has been honored by city leaders for replacing the ramshackle homes with new models. But at the time, he said, the effort to replace the homes wasn’t without its vocal detractors.
“People hated me for tearing down those houses. It was brutal,” he said. “A lot of people got mad at me and a lot of bad things were said about Shawn Hipskind, because the houses were in the historic district.
“I’d even say to people, ‘Do you want to buy one of these houses?’ And they’d be like, ‘Yeah.’ I’d take them inside and their jaw would hit the floor that wasn’t there, you know. They were like, ‘Sorry I wasted your time,’ and run off before they could pay me $80,000 for the shack with no floor in it. They somehow didn’t want to do that.”
Whatever goodwill the housing phase of revitalization may have cost him, he more than recouped with his second development project.
“After I got all these houses built, I really wanted places for people to hang out in downtown Benton now that there were places for people to live,” he said.
In 2019, Hipskind purchased the historic, if long-languishing, Palace Theatre, saving it from an uncertain future. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the Palace Theatre was built in 1919, for $60,000, more than $1 million in today’s dollars. One of three original movie theaters in Benton, it’s the oldest building of its kind in Saline County.
Hailed at its opening in the local media as “The Show Place of the South,” the two-story brick building at 224 W. South Street. boasted a large marquee that extended over the sidewalk and a brightly lit entrance. Inside, there were 1,000 luxurious seats, an intricately decorated stage and a glass-enclosed box office. It debuted Friday, March 5, 1920, with the silent film “In Walked Mary.”
Unfortunately, the shine of the grand new theater was to be short-lived, as ownership sold the Palace just a few months after opening. It changed hands several times during the 1920s until being purchased by the city in 1929.
For nearly a century after that, it served myriad municipal purposes, including as a youth center, the Saline County Library and, since 2005, for storage. In 2012 the structure was added to the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas’s list of “Most Endangered Buildings,” and in 2014 landed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places. But city leaders remained stumped as to what to do with it, with demolition never being completely ruled out as an option.
RŌBER is an upscale restaurant and whiskey lounge; image thanks to Brian Chilson
Enter Hipskind, who converted the space into restaurants, including Valhalla Kitchen + Bar and Axe Throwing and Baja Grill, and added RŌBER Cocktails + Culinary in the annex next door. Hipskind, who originally operated Valhalla, recently sold the business to operators Craig Roe and Heather Baber-Roe, who own the other two concepts and who rebranded it Valhalla Kitchen + Bar.
“Baja Grill is 3,000 square feet and Valhalla is 3,000 square feet, and the Axe Throwing is 1,500 square feet,” Hipskind said. “RŌBER is a newer high-scale restaurant that we built out and that might be closer to 4,000 square feet counting the whiskey lounge and everything they put in there.”
For his work, Hipskind received the Visionary Award from the Benton Chamber of Commerce and the market has responded positively as well. Other developers have followed his lead with other downtown renovations and property values have spiked, sure proof of any real estate concept.
Hipskind said he’s taking a break from development for the moment, although he retains ownership of The Palace and leases all but one of the homes. He said he’s got additional project ideas in mind for the future, but for now is content to simply look upon what’s been done with pride.
“Things are becoming more local and it’s not a necessity for all these big, huge chains to take over a city anymore,” he said. “It’s just a huge benefit for everybody if we’re keeping these dollars local and they’re circulating within these local districts instead of getting pushed out to wherever these people hold their corporations. That’s our money that’s funneling out of Central Arkansas.
“[The projects] turned out pretty much how I envisioned them. I was pretty confident that it was going to be a home run if I could just get through the massive amount of work that had to take place. Everybody was super thrilled whenever I took over The Palace, and by the time that had happened, I had already done the block downtown. This is me saving history, not destroying it.”