FAVORITE SON

Steve Clark drives hometown revival in ways large and small.

By Dwain Hebda

The looming Fort Smith murals painted on the side of OK Foods’ silos are as captivating a piece of public art as can be found anywhere in Arkansas. Soaring over the landscape on one edge of downtown, the black-and-gray “American Heroes” depicts three individuals in stunning detail: Kristina, a young business owner, and Ed, a Navajo man active in the Lawbreakers and Peacemakers reenactment group, flank one square silo, while Gene “Beck” Beckham, a World War II veteran and 70-year OK Foods employee, is portrayed on the other.

As with all great artwork, the key to “American Heroes” is the angle of perspective of the viewer. In this case, the angle of the subjects’ view is important as well. Ed’s gaze is downward as if taking stock of what’s behind him; Kristina looks out steady and confident to her right, and Gene’s eyes aim skyward. It’s an apt representation of life, be it individual or in the collective, seen in triptych: acknowledgement of the past, focus on the present and a glimpse of the future.

“Placemaking has been an effective catalyst for revitalization and renewal throughout fort smith.”

If Fort Smith entrepreneur Steve Clark’s work in reviving his longtime hometown needed an illustration, many would do, but none would be as fitting as Guido van Helten’s monochrome masterpiece. Clark, a highly successful entrepreneur that claims Fort Smith as his adopted hometown, has spearheaded the drive to reinvigorate the city’s core through public art, repurposed buildings and fresh thinking.

“Anything we can do to make it easy for people to live, work and play and then make it desirable for developers, through any number of plans, to develop should be top of mind for those of us working on downtown and for the city at large,” Clark said.

Clark’s love affair with the city dates back to his childhood where trips to Fort Smith would form a blueprint for what he would attempt to resuscitate later in his adult life.

“I graduated from Roland, Oklahoma, High School in Sequoyah County and have had a bit of a romantic relationship with Fort Smith,” Clark said. “You leave Roland, you drive through the bottoms where it was agriculture and then you would get to the Arkansas River where you’d cross the bridge. Coming off the bridge you’d be coming into this really picturesque downtown. There was kind of this transition from rural agricultural to urban downtown and I was always captivated by it, whether it was lit up for Christmas and the holidays or just bustling with activity.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Arkansas in 1986, Clark lived in Little Rock for a spell before returning to Fort Smith in his 30s. He founded Propak, a provider of logistics, transportation and supply chain management solutions, growing the company to thousands of employees, including dozens in its downtown Fort Smith headquarters. He also founded Rockfish, a digital media company, and while growing both companies he couldn’t help but notice how the vitality of his businesses stood in sharp contrast to the generally stagnant state of the community he called home.

“[Industry] was still going, but you could certainly feel that there was beginning to be a bit of transition,” he said. “And then when Whirlpool closed their big plant here [in 2012], it took us quite a while to see that not only is Fort Smith changing, but the economy at large is changing. I feel like we went through maybe a 10-year stretch where I’m not sure we really knew what to do.

“Fort Smith is a city with fantastic bones, but it was a very strong manufacturing city, and when Whirlpool went away I think we were focused on trying to do what we had always done. Even though we have a fantastic chamber and fantastic leadership at the chamber, what we as a city had been set up to do was changing.”

Rockfish sold in 2016 and Propak in 2022 and today Clark remains employed by the latter in addition to mapping, out other entrepreneurial pursuits. That, and his ongoing work to help Fort Smith reimagine itself and its place in the global marketplace.

South Ninth Street mural.

“We can never lose sight of the fact that we’re in a global fight for the maintenance of jobs and the attraction of new jobs and the education to prepare us for the jobs of the coming generation, which is changing quickly,” Clark said.

It’s not the first time the city has had to radically change course to keep up with the changing times. Steeped in frontier lore, Fort Smith was founded in 1817 as a military outpost, with a small settlement sprouting up around it. The military would be an important economic driver in some form for the next 200-plus years, thanks to the establishment of Fort Chaffee in the 1940s, but dwindled until the U.S. Army base transitioned to an Arkansas National Guard training facility in the 1990s.

Economic diversification came via manufacturing that took advantage of the river, railroad and later highway transport that was available. Like the military, manufacturing remains an important sector, though not nearly what it once was. The loss of Whirlpool and its 900 jobs sent shockwaves through the local economy, and a period of malaise set in as the city struggled to reimagine itself.

Into this breach stepped community visionaries, Clark among them, who lent critical leadership to the efforts of the city to regain its momentum.

“You can’t really explain the why, other than you kind of wake up and realize there’s no economic cavalry coming. You fight a little harder if you think you’re on your own,” Clark said of his motivation to get involved. “And let’s face it: The economy has changed so dramatically and shifted from local to regional to state to national and then global that the things we’re doing, or trying to do here, are literally the minimum price of participation.

“I think that’s kind of where I landed, that it was not realistic to think a municipality or bureaucratic organization could have that kind of perspective or vision. You can’t even be upset about it. They’re simply not set up for it. It takes a lot of the same entrepreneurial tenets that exist in business or commerce and need to be applied on a larger scale for civic return.”

Clark and his allies in this effort approached the problem from a wholly unique angle. Whereas traditional strategies revolved around cheap land parcels or available warehousing, the new approach called for something called placemaking, investing in community amenities that enhanced quality of life to lure employers and attract and retain workforce.

A bold reassigning of both chicken and egg in the economic development equation, placemaking has been an effective catalyst for revitalization and renewal throughout Fort Smith ever since, particularly downtown.

At 70 S. Seventh St.

Clark’s fingerprints on this process are most clearly visible through 64.6 Downtown, a nonprofit committed to creating vibrant spaces through business development, arts and culture, special events and projects. That group spawned The Unexpected, which is responsible for much of the larger downtown artwork that peeks out seemingly everywhere today.

Since 2015, The Unexpected has steadily helped craft the city’s new image, inspiring countless other communities statewide to follow suit in public art. But as with all radical new ideas, the early years of the effort ran contrary to many residents’ tastes.

“I remember telling people I may literally be forced to move because of this, because there was a huge outcry of people who did not like the idea of art on historic buildings,” Clark said. “I was standing in front of a broken, empty building that a beautiful mural was going on and a woman was standing there just shaking her head. I go, ‘What do you think?’ She said, ‘I don’t like it.’ I said, ‘What do you not like?’ She said, ‘It’s not our history.’ I said, ‘But frankly, neither are empty buildings and broken glass.’

“I wanted to be empathetic because what she was saying was ‘It’s not how I would do it.’ Fort Smith was stuck in her mind in a very particular, sentimental way. But the flipside of that is, as I told her, I love our history, I just don’t want to live in it. It’s important to remind people that this is who we are and then to act on that to make people see downtown differently than they’ve been used to seeing it.”

In the eight years since The Unexpected debuted, others in the city have adopted its audacious mindset, launching revamped living and gathering spaces, establishing festivals and birthing attractions including the crowning achievement of the U.S. Marshals Museum, slated to open this summer. As each new dream comes online it spawns something else, with the museum promising to be the biggest incubator of all.

“[The museum] has been a long-term process. I have been involved with it as a donor throughout,” Clark said. “Anytime you can have a federal museum in your city, especially one of the magnitude of U.S. Marshals, it’s a big thing. It would be impossible to overestimate the potential value.

“We have the largest undeveloped riverfront, I think, of any mid-sized city in the country. I think that becomes the first big ornament on that tree, on the river. The way I look at it is it puts us in a tier of cities that take themselves seriously and take their citizens seriously by doing the things they need to do for continued growth in the future.”

As commanding and ambitious as art such as “American Heroes” is, it’s not the only thing that catches the eye in downtown Fort Smith these days. Public art abounds in large, vibrant murals on brick and board and via street pieces that range from bronze effigy to whimsical junk sculpture. There’s also a certain art to the way commercial buildings have been refreshed, of the music and the food aromas that float on the breeze in summertime. All of which Clark has played a role in nurturing, either directly or indirectly, as part of a long quest to help the city rediscover itself.

Steve Clark

“Before The Unexpected, downtown just kind of was what downtown was. It was where the courthouse was, it had a lot of history,” Clark said. “Now you’ve got people wanting to bring their families downtown to see the arts. You have greater civic participation, greater attendance at the city director meetings, more people willing to say this is what we need, this is what we want.

“It’s not just about attracting jobs; it’s about keeping jobs, it’s about making Fort Smith a place where ultimately people don’t want to leave. That really has to be the first goal. And I think that’s what we’re doing. I think we’re seeing ourselves, maybe for the first time in a long time, as a place where people want to stay.”

Talking about such achievements lends a crackling energy to Clark’s voice. There’s still work to be done to help solidify the residential and commercial amenities downtown, but there’s an undeniable air of optimism in Fort Smith, to his great delight and satisfaction.

“So many things in history are not quite explainable other than there seems to be a rising up of people who say, ‘This isn’t necessarily the type of city that we want right now,’ so what does the city that we do want look like?” Clark said.

“People ask me why do this? The answer is, because this is the type of city I want to live in, that’s why. A city that can appreciate the arts, a city that can appreciate its historicity but not necessarily be stuck in it.”

RAISING CONWAY

$25 million federal grant will extend greenway connections, spur private investment.

By James Walden

Thanks to a multimillion-dollar federal grant, Conway in the next few years will be able to add 15 miles to its trail network, bringing amenities, commuting alternatives and new development to the college town.

The city announced Aug. 10, 2022, that its Connect Conway program had won a $24.647 million RAISE (Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) Discretionary Grant to build the expansive greenway system in the community. To call the grant a coup in radically advancing Conway’s future might not be an overstatement.

The U.S. Department of Transportation grant program is part of a series of historically large federal grants intended to help address decades of underinvestment in transportation infrastructure. RAISE, along with other programs such as the Reconnecting Communities pilot project and Safe Streets and Roads for All grants enacted by Congress in 2021, reflect a major shift in federal transportation funding toward transit and active transportation modes under Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Rendering of the proposed Little Creek Plaza; image thanks to Crafton Tull

The Connect Conway greenway system will tie east Conway, which often feels like the forgotten child of the community, to the more asset-rich west Conway. The project’s network will connect 10 city parks, seven schools, three major retail centers, three colleges, 14 employment centers and 16 neighborhoods.

“Creating a web of bike and pedestrian routes that takes people to a wide number of destinations creates possibilities for the community.”

Offering an accessible, convenient transportation alternative regardless of income makes this project more than just another quality-of-life amenity like many greenway trails.

This connectivity is why the city of Conway calls the project transformational, and change is already afoot. For example, Jonesboro developers Jetton General Contracting and Halsey Thrasher Harpole Real Estate Group have applied to the city to build University Lofts, a three-story, mixed-use development of 120 residential units and first-floor commercial space on College Avenue. The greenway plan was an important draw to attract the University Lofts project. Mixed-use infill projects promote greater walkability and support use of the greenway beyond recreational use. The Connect Conway greenway will connect residents at University Lofts to the University of Central Arkansas campus. The first-floor commercial space could support uses such as coffee or bike shops, further promoting walkability.

This development is not a one-off example. Anyone traveling to Northwest Arkansas to the Razorback Greenway can’t help but notice all the trailside infill development occurring. Outside Arkansas, Action Greensboro, a nonprofit that promotes public-private partnership investments in Greensboro, North Carolina, has found the $37.5 million invested in the Downtown Greensboro Greenway is yielding more than $415 million in planned and completed private investment in the heart of that city. By 2020, Atlanta’s $670 million investment in the Atlanta BeltLine project had spurred private investment of $8.2 billion in the project, which began in 2005.

These types of development are the secret sauce of bike and pedestrian infrastructure investments. Conway is already working to leverage the future potential of Connect Conway to inspire more smart planning. The city recently completed the Oak Street Ahead Plan, a broad reimagining of the city’s primary legacy corridor.

The proposed University Lofts; image thanks to Jamey McFadden

The Oak Street of today is a place any pedestrian or bike rider actively works to avoid. The Oak Street Ahead plan tackles this issue head on by proposing a series of land use and transportation recommendations to make the corridor more accessible for all users and a place people want to be. This is key, because Connect Conway will intersect Oak Street by way of the Little Creek Greenway. The plan proposes trail-oriented development to take advantage of the planned Little Creek Plaza that is being funded through the RAISE grant. This interrelationship will help ensure the greenway’s benefits extend beyond its narrow corridor and into the community.

Public investment primes the pump for private investment, promoting walkability and economic vitality in the neighborhood. Connect Conway is a big deal for the city and a big deal for Central Arkansas. It sets a framework for additional public and private investments that have real potential to transform the city for the foreseeable future.

James Walden, AICP, is an urban planning leader with Garver.

STREAMING CONNECTIVITY

Building Rose Creek Park and Trail holds promise for Capitol View neighborhood.

By Mason Ellis

“The shallow stream of Rose Creek within a comparatively small area in this section winds through exceedingly varied scenes, now over a pebbly bed surrounded by scattered cypress, now through a meadow with groups of willows, now through a little grove, and now through a rocky ravine — of small proportions but much beauty — under a bridge at a point suggestive of a beautiful permanent structure in keeping with surrounding nature, and thence on to its junction with the Arkansas River, westward of the Rocky Bluffs. Such natural features are precisely the elements to determine the site of a park, and while it has been impossible to fix any definite areas on the general plan, whatever sections may not actually be required by the railroad may with particular appropriateness form connections between the Capitol grounds and the River Bluffs.”

It’s been 110 years since city planner and landscape architect John Nolan first suggested the valley between downtown and the growing Capitol View neighborhood as a beautiful park for the city. The area has remained overlooked for most of the time since, but Rose Creek is getting some new attention thanks to the surrounding community.

Like most waterways in urban areas, Rose Creek is virtually unknown to the — residents of the city it runs through. The small stream, which starts at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences campus, travels under Interstate 630 and runs alongside the Union Pacific railroad line before finally emptying into the Arkansas River — has been channelized, buried and altered beyond recognition. However, this tiny stream is the backbone of a community effort to turn an overlooked and neglected part of the Capitol View neighborhood into its biggest asset.

The Rose Creek Initiative is developing the trail; Photo thanks to the Rose Creek Initiative

The Rose Creek Initiative was formed in 2004 to create a new city park along the banks of Rose Creek at some vacant lots at the east edge of the Capitol View neighborhood, a largely overgrown area that has been a regular dumping ground with only a few crumbling houses remaining. In 2019, the group expanded its goals to include building the Rose Creek Trail and the Rose Creek Watershed Alliance. And in 2022, the organization officially became a nonprofit. Today the park, the trail and the watershed are a three-part plan to not only revitalize an inner ring neighborhood, but also build connections between the neighborhood and nearby communities.

The Rose Creek Initiative has organized multiple volunteer-led efforts to clean up trash in the park and in the creek, including the installation of a homemade trash boom to prevent trash from entering the park and the Arkansas River. Other events, such as the Pop-up Park event in 2022 and the annual Christmas fireworks watch party at the State Capitol, have highlighted the park’s possibilities.

The key to success for Rose Creek is in the completion of the Rose Creek Trail. Communities up and down the Razorback Greenway in Northwest Arkansas have stood witness to the benefits of trail-oriented development. In North Little Rock, the thriving Rockwater Village along the Arkansas River Trail is proof that people want to have access to trails and want to have options for transportation. The Rose Creek Trail will have a similar effect. Stretching from the Arkansas River Trail on the north near Gill Street to the Seventh Street Viaduct on the south, this one-mile trail will have a big impact. The trail will make the Capitol View and Stifft Station neighborhoods one of the only single-family residential neighborhoods in Little Rock to have direct trail access to the Arkansas River Trail system. This will not only provide access to recreation opportunities along the city’s river parks, but also will provide a direct and safe route for biking or walking to downtown. The trail will be a link from the river trail to the Capitol Avenue bike route connecting to UAMS and will one day connect to the Southwest Trail stretching all the way to Hot Springs. And, although the trail is only a small footpath now, there are already new investments in the surrounding areas underway, from renovations of vacant lots and empty houses to large-scale mixed-use development, all either directly on the future trail route or a short distance away.

Future trail site.; Photo thanks to the Rose Creek Initiative

It’s often we see stories of large-scale, million-dollar projects by big developers or big organizations that promise to bring big changes to a city. These mega projects get most of the attention because of their sheer size and sparkle. But do not forget the small projects, the ideas talked about among neighbors or dreamed about by residents that get together and decide to make something happen. These smaller projects at the neighborhood level, led by the people that live within the communities, can make a larger and more direct impact on neighborhoods.

Mason Ellis AIA, LEED AP, is a principal at WER Architects and chair of the Rose Creek Initiative.

THE NWA HOUSING CRISIS

Fayetteville looks to ADUs, pre-approved designs as solutions.

BY JONATHAN CURTH

A crisis seems like the perfect time to suspend, bend or even break the rules. Natural disasters often see curfews imposed or martial law declared. Military conflicts lead to national governments appropriating material and equipment. Often these efforts are successful in achieving their stated intent. Perhaps just as frequently, though, the tools employed to address a crisis have unintended, long-term negative consequences.

“For local governments, among the more pervasive of issues arising to the level of crisis are housing availability and affordability. Once the problem of the United States’ more prominent coastal markets, ballooning housing prices are now found nationwide, including in parts of Arkansas. ”

Notably, Northwest Arkansas’s housing market continues to stand out for its growth in both construction and prices. While Arkansas overall retains one of the lowest median home values in the country, the cities of Benton and Washington counties are experiencing dramatic market change.

Fayetteville, the largest city in the region and the second-largest city in Arkansas, is looking at ways to address its housing crisis with changes to building regulations and permitting times and other moves. The impetus was the doubling of the average price of housing over the last eight years.

In 2012, the average home price in Washington County’s county seat was $200,000, according to a Skyline Report performed by University of Arkansas researchers. In 2022, the report found, the average price was $400,000. Over a longer period, from 2010 to 2022, Fayetteville’s multifamily housing vacancy fell from approximately 15% to 1%. Without a commensurate increase in income, residents are relocating, being displaced or dedicating ever-greater proportions of their income to rents and mortgages.

Fayetteville in particular is further challenged by an additional factor: It is home to Arkansas’s largest university. While the University of Arkansas is an asset to Fayetteville, the region and the state, its growth has strained the local housing market. After expanding by approximately 1,000 students annually for 10 years before plateauing at approximately 27,000 in 2019, by 2022 enrollment had grown to 31,000. The immediate impact of this was an inability to house all the students who wished to live on campus. To accommodate the expanded enrollment, the university signed contracts for almost 1,000 bedrooms off campus in private, multifamily developments. While the influx of students undoubtedly benefits aspects of the local economy, it also impacts housing options for nonstudents.

In this climate of growing housing costs and dwindling availability, there is a strong temptation for elected leaders to increase home construction at any cost. Zoning codes that once assured predictability are recognized as midwives for land-hungry, low-density development patterns. Subdivision connectivity standards adopted as best practices now reveal each street stub-out to be a lost house. Areas of potential natural hazard, like slopes and floodplains, appear as unexplored greenfield sites.

In Fayetteville, a critical approach has been taken, but not necessarily at the cost of urban design and planning. Instead of repealing ordinances or letting ineffective ones remain, many are revisited and amended after validation against planning goals. Rather than short-circuiting a permitting process, it is assessed and often streamlined. When anticipated outcomes are not realized, different approaches are explored. Instances of each follow from Fayetteville’s years-old steps toward a larger, quality and more diverse housing stock.

Among the steps that have garnered Fayetteville regional and national attention is its evolving regulation on accessory dwelling units (ADUs). In recognition of a newly adopted “attainable housing” goal in 2005, planners presented the city council several tools to promote housing options. Among these was a means to allow existing homeowners to add housing to their property. Like many cities, much of Fayetteville’s land use is dedicated to areas of single-family homes that are unlikely to be redeveloped and present little opportunity for more housing. A solution was an old one found in many areas of Fayetteville and nationwide: ADUs. Also known as carriage houses, mother-in-law suites and by a host of other names, ADUs represent a rare opportunity to add incremental, small-scale housing to existing neighborhoods while also empowering homeowners with a means of supplementing their income with an on-site rental.

Traditional neighborhood with incremental development.

Fayetteville’s city council recognized and continues to recognize the value that ADUs represent. With an initial ordinance adoption in 2008 to permit ADUs anywhere single-family homes are allowed, the council has since amended the ordinance three times to broaden allowances and reduce regulation of ADUs. Key barriers to remove were a standard for separate utility metering, a deed restriction requirement that mandated that a homeowner live in the main house on a property or the ADU, and numerous prescriptive design standards. With these “poison pills” eliminated, limits on ADU sizes and the number of permitted ADUs per property were increased, and ADUs were permitted to be built in association with duplexes. Many other changes were made, with the net effect being a dramatic increase in ADU permitting, albeit from a low starting point. Where Fayetteville issued between one and three ADU permits in the late 2000s, 16 were approved for construction in 2022. In a similar vein, Fayetteville recognized that its goal to encourage more diverse housing options was being confounded by legacy ordinances that pushed developers toward single- and two-family dwellings or large apartments. Given the less stringent standards that applied to detached houses and duplexes, it is perhaps unsurprising that many developers chose this construction type despite any community need for townhomes, three and fourplexes, cottage courts and a wide range of other housing types now commonly known as the “missing middle.” On the other end of the spectrum, to justify the expense of engineering and design, a developer contemplating anything beyond a detached house or duplex had to build many, many more units.

Around the same time that the consequences of these development standards were becoming widely understood, Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas grew rapidly and the city experienced multiple flooding events. Students no longer able to be housed on campus and new residents entered Fayetteville in larger numbers, often housed in large footprint single- and two-family homes with associated driveways and other hard surfaces without accounting for run-off. Although a 6,000-square-foot duplex required no accommodation for stormwater capture, a 3,000-square-foot fourplex did. Where smaller units in greater numbers may have been what Fayetteville needed, ordinances continued to push the market toward the path of least resistance.

This changed in 2021 with one of the largest amendments to Fayetteville’s development code in years. With Planning Commission and development community input, staff proposed that development standards and project categories be based on new imperviousness instead of housing type. That means the amount of new concrete, asphalt, rooftop and other areas that prevent rainwater infiltration is the new standard. If a project can minimize these impervious surfaces, it is eligible for streamlined approval. Fayetteville’s city council adopted the new standards, and they are in practice today, albeit with insufficient time to evaluate effectiveness.

Regulations can hamper the supply of affordable housing: For every residential project that is denied or becomes infeasible due to regulation, labor shortages, building material prices or public opposition, those unrealized housing units contribute to higher housing costs. Although it is overly reductive to assert that Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas and Fayetteville can build their way out of our housing crisis, it is irresponsible to dismiss the upward pressure on home prices and rents when more residents compete for fewer homes.

In a step to address this, Fayetteville is engaging with the evolving practice of pre-approving buildings. While many elected officials, developers and residents are familiar with zoning as the primary regulatory tool for land use, “pattern zoning” is a less common standard. Pattern zoning creates a framework for neighborhood-oriented residential and commercial projects along with a convenient path to project approval. As a subset of pattern zoning, a pre-approved building design program uses stakeholder engagement, market study and ordinance research to craft a series of context-sensitive buildings for a given project boundary. These buildings are vetted for compliance with adopted codes and ordinances and then made available to residents and developers who can benefit from the savings in design cost, permitting time and, ultimately, risk.

For Fayetteville, a pre-approved building program can meet several goals, from reducing barriers to housing production and restoring municipal control over residential building design, to giving residents some agency over neighborhood appearance and giving the opportunity for incremental introduction of new, but appropriately scaled, housing types. Additionally, vetting building designs through the municipal review process is an opportunity to simultaneously evaluate internal processes. With development of the pre-approved building program still underway, expectations are high.

“All told, while Fayetteville has adapted in many ways to the housing crisis, data indicate that more change is needed. ”

With almost one-third of the city zoned for quarter-acre, single-family homes, zoning reform is likely an issue on the horizon. Similarly, development costs that Fayetteville can influence, like infrastructure requirements, fees and design standards, all merit consideration for whether they contribute to higher quality design and standard of living or if they are relics of 20th century best practices. If past efforts are any indication, Fayetteville will remain on its path toward methodical experimentation, deliberate change and steady progress.

Jonathan Curth, AICP, is development services director for the city of Fayetteville, overseeing planning, building safety and code enforcement.