More than one philosopher has pronounced that change is the only constant. Change has certainly been a constant in Arkansas for the last 25 years. Some things – businesses, institutions and places, for example – have changed more than others, changed so much that they wouldn’t be recognizable to a time traveler from 1984.
What follows are just a few of those entities most altered.
1. Acorn
Founded in Little Rock by Wade Rathke in 1970 as Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, nonprofit Acorn started out working to help people on welfare meet their basic needs. Soon the organization grew beyond the state and took on unemployment, housing and predatory lending.
Not always effective, Acorn’s activities almost always generated headlines, some of them bad, as when Rathke’s brother Dale embezzled nearly $1 million in 1999 and 2000, and Acorn leadership chose not to report it to police or the membership, instead seeking quiet restitution.
During the 2008 presidential election, some conservatives lambasted the organization as a front for massive voting fraud, a claim debunked by nonpartisan watchdogs.
2. Alltel
A rural telephone system installer in a small state – who cares, right?
Allied Telephone Co. may not have looked like much in the 1940s, but when it merged with Mid-Continent Telephone in 1983, things changed. It grew its markets and its services and eventually shed its landline business to concentrate on cell phones. That proved a genius move.
Blossoming to the nation’s No. 5 wireless carrier, Alltel was sold last year to Verizon for $28.1 billion. That merger is creating the nation’s largest network in terms of both area covered and total customers. It also created some very rich Arkansans.
3. Argenta
North Little Rock’s historic downtown district was down at the heels going into the 1990s. Crime was high, gangs abounded, and long-time businesses and residents emigrated to tonier neighborhoods.
But some stalwarts refused to give up on Argenta, and after a brutal murder, they were galvanized into action. They formed Boosters for a Better Downtown, which lobbied City Hall for action. The Argenta Community Development Corp. was also founded, and the nonprofit began buying up and rehabilitating derelict properties.
By the turn of the 21st century, Argenta was a quickly gentrifying district of historic homes, and Main Street was seeing a commercial revival. Today it boasts a lively arts community, well-regarded restaurants and more than 50 new townhouses under construction.
4. Arkansas Arts Center
Deep inside the galleries of the Arts Center is an art deco stone edifice, the original building’s entrance, "Museum of Fine Arts" emblazoned on the lintel. From humble beginnings in 1937, through the dogged efforts of advocates like Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and long-time director Townsend Wolfe, the museum has expanded both its building and its scope.
The Arkansas Arts Center was growing steadily, in size and scope, until 1998, when ground was broken on a transformational project: the addition of 30,000 SF and renovation of 12,000 SF of existing space. The grand opening was in February 2000.
Now, generations revere it as a place of learning, where culture is doled out via the galleries, Children’s Theatre and Museum School, and a source of pride, with collections that have national and international reputations.
5. Arkansas Business and Arkansas Times
Arkansas Business and Arkansas Times are the descendants of the Arkansas Writers Project, founded in 1974 by Alan Leveritt. The project first published the Union Station Times, which in ’75 changed its name to the Arkansas Times, a monthly magazine.
Olivia Myers joined the Arkansas Writers Project in 1978 as an advertising account executive and in 1982 became a partner. Arkansas Business was launched as a biweekly in 1984, and Myers, now Olivia Myers Farrell, became the associate publisher of the Arkansas Writers Project the same year. Arkansas Business went weekly in 1990, and the Arkansas Times became a weekly tabloid in 1992.
In 1995, Farrell left AWP to form Arkansas Business Publishing Group, which produces a variety of niche publications. In 2000, Arkansas Business President and Publisher Jeff Hankins launched ArkansasBusiness.com, a national award-winning online news product that was the basis for a commercial Web development division called Flex360.
The Arkansas Times remains a tabloid, whose editor, Max Brantley, writes a lively and influential blog – a word most of us didn’t know in 2004 and which wasn’t a word in 1984.
Arkansas Business Publishing Group, through diversification, vision, consistent management and prudence, remains a vibrant enterprise even during a miserable media and economic environment. (It’s not bragging if it’s true, but we’ll knock on wood anyway.)
6. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
When your biggest rival has won Pulitzers and the hearts and minds of its readers, that might give a newspaper publisher pause. But not Walter Hussman and his Arkansas Democrat.
The Arkansas Gazette may have had the biggest names, but the Democrat proved to have more fight in it – especially in the form of editor John Robert Starr – when Hussman began Little Rock’s newspaper war in 1979. With free classifieds as a loss leader, the Democrat faced down first the Patterson family and then the mighty Gannett corporation, which threw in the towel in 1991. Hussman bought his former rival’s assets and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was born.
But that’s not the end of the story for Arkansas’ statewide daily. After the newspaper war, it defied some predictions and maintained a large newshole, better than most dailies around the country. However, it’s now facing the same tough times as other newspapers and has instituted cost-cutting measures, including dozens of layoffs. It survived a newspaper war. Can it survive a media meltdown?
7. Arkansas Travelers
Throughout its history, this team has been defined by change.
Associated with the St. Louis Cardinals since 1966, the Travs made the switch to the Anaheim (now Los Angeles) Angels in 2001. Even longer ensconced in the cozy, if dated, confines of Ray Winder Field, they have called state-of-the-art Dickey-Stephens Park home since 2007.
Where they were once primarily a contender for also-ran, now these boys of summer are contenders for league pennants. The fans have joined in the turn-around, their attendance growing from spotty to record-smashing.
Even the number of owners has grown over the years: In 1959, former owner Ray Winder masterminded a scheme to get the team back to central Arkansas as a fan-owned enterprise. It still is today.
8. Arvest Bank
It’s tempting to say anything associated with the Walton family is bound to turn into gold; and indeed, Arvest is the state’s largest bank by asset value at $9.7 billion.
The company traces its roots to 1961, when Sam Walton bought a majority interest in the Bank of Bentonville. In 1984, the year Arkansas Business launched, what is now Arvest was a collection of four small banks: Bank of Bentonville, Bank of Pea Ridge, First National Bank & Trust of Rogers and First National Bank of Siloam Springs.
A seemingly endless series of acquisitions allowed Arvest to march past the state’s best-known banking entities. All of its holdings were collapsed into a single charter – that of McIlroy Bank & Trust of Fayetteville, dated 1872 – making Arvest the oldest bank in the state as well as the biggest.
And if anyone wants to know how sound Arvest is, its Web site has a message for you: "Arvest will not seek TARP funding. Government assistance not necessary."
9. Cabot
There was a time when folks in Little Rock would just stare at you and slowly shake their heads if you suggested living in Lonoke County.
But during the 1990s, rising crime rates and a public school system struggling to meet a federal desegregation order drove many folks to seek the shelter of the exurbs – what came to be known as White Flight – and Cabot was a destination of choice.
Since 2000, the population has exploded, from the mid-15,000s to around 22,000. Construction has boomed, but so has traffic; the afternoon rush hour sees cars backed up onto northbound Highway 67/167 at Exit 16, with another logjam further south at the interchange with Interstate 440.
10. Capital Hotel
History seeps from the very walls of this fantastic 1872 building with its cast iron facade.
It has survived its own rise and fall several times, with a renovation in 1908; collateral decline along with much of downtown Little Rock in the 1970s and ’80s, only to be revived again in 1983; and most recently undergoing a top-to-bottom restoration and upgrade to reinforce its status as the state’s premier luxury accommodation for travelers. It reopened in November 2007 after being closed for two long years.
Among its highlights: perhaps the state’s greatest chef, two-time James Beard Award nominee Lee Richardson.
11. CDI Contractors
It was a company sitting in the sweet spot. CDI had a national profile, and major projects like the Heifer International headquarters on its resume.
Founded in 1987 by Dillard’s Inc. and Bill Clark, originally to build Dillard’s stores, the commercial construction company grew to become one of the 15 largest private companies in the state, with annual revenue of $575 million in 2007, the year Clark died.
In August of last year, Dillard’s exercised its option to buy the other half of CDI from the heirs of its co-founder, Bill Clark. Clark’s son, William, who had succeeded his father as CEO, tried unsuccessfully to buy the company from Dillard’s. In January of this year, he resigned. In February, he announced the formation of Clark Contractors LLC.
12. Excelsior/The Peabody Little Rock
You probably have to be at least 40 to remember watching the implosion of the Marion and Grady Manning hotels on the riverfront in downtown Little Rock in 1980. Their demolition made way for a new convention center with arguably the city’s first truly modern hotel: the Excelsior.
A headline on the very first issue of Arkansas Business – Vol. 1, No. 1 – reads: "Rogers concedes losses at Excelsior, but says they match his expectations."
That would be Doyle Rogers, the legendary Batesville developer, who brought Little Rock the red brick and shiny glass Excelsior, which became world infamous as the site of some sort of encounter between Gov. Bill Clinton and a young woman best known by her married name, Paula Jones.
In 2000, the hotel was sold to the ducky Peabody Hotel Group of Memphis, which gave it a $33 million makeover and a grand reopening in 2002.
13. Heifer International
"Not a cup, but a cow." That was Dan West’s epiphany as he helped get food to children during the Spanish Civil War. The nonprofit agency he founded, Heifers for Relief, sent its first load of cows to Puerto Rico in 1944.
West also created a way of compounding the benefit by "passing on the gift," where recipients would give a calf to a neighbor in need.
Operating below the general public’s radar for many years, Heifer relocated its headquarters from St. Louis to Little Rock in 1971 and started raising its profile in the early 1990s, when Jo Luck became its president and CEO.
Revenue has grown from $7 million in 1992 to $126.5 million in fiscal 2008, and Heifer is known globally for its good works, which, in addition to providing animals (now purchased locally), include teaching environmentally sound agriculture practices and helping impoverished women find financial independence.
It raised its profile even higher when, in 2006, it opened its environmentally friendly headquarters, winner of several architecture awards, next to the Clinton Presidential Library.
14. Highfill
From cows to commercial airlines. That was the magical transmutation that underwent a heretofore-unheralded pasture in Highfill (that’s between Vaughn and Healing Springs, for those who need orientation).
Serving fast-growing northwest Arkansas, the $109.6 million facility went online in 1998. It shook off early name-calling like "Wal-Mart’s Airport" and "Poultryport," and welcomed a distinguished visitor for its dedication service: Air Force One, which brought in President Bill Clinton for the festivities.
15. Maverick Transportation
Once upon a time, when you passed the Galloway exit headed west from North Little Rock, there wasn’t much besides a lot of trees. Then one day, a small patch was cleared and a few maroon-colored semi-trucks could be seen.
Today the Maverick Trucking operation is a sight to behold, a sprawling facility that’s a testament to the company’s growth. Founded in 1980, Maverick had by 2008 become a $290 million business and the second-largest flatbed carrier in the nation. Those signature maroon trucks remain Maverick’s calling card.
16. Northwest Arkansas
The transformation of northwest Arkansas started well before 1984, but it started hitting on all cylinders in the 1990s. The population of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area grew by 47.5 percent between 1990 and 2000, and regional resentment between the fast-growing northwestern corner and the political and population center at Little Rock exploded in 2000. That’s when Arkansas Business rated the tug-of-war over the location of Razorbacks football games as the No. 1 business story of the year.
In 2003, the Fayetteville MSA topped the Milken Institute’s Best Performing Cities index. Some irrational exuberance followed, with overbuilding in both the residential and commercial sectors that peaked even before the national recession began at the end of 2007. Layoffs at the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. corporate headquarters in Bentonville, announced last month, were a psychological as well as financial blow.
But a new Skyline Report suggests that the worst may be over. The inventory of homes for sale in the fourth quarter of 2008 was below 1,000 for the first time since early 2005; it had been almost three times that high in late 2006.
17. Oaklawn and Southland
The sport of kings and the sport of the common man, as it were, share roots in antiquity – or, as far as greyhound racing, the 19th century.
But with the 21st century within shouting distance, each was running in something of a perception rut: Pari-mutuel was your parents’ or grandparents’ pastime, not for Gen Xers or the Xbox set. So the tracks came up with a new tack – casino-style gaming to augment the betting windows. What about that constitutional ban on games of chance? No problem. In the law they’re called "electronic games of skill" to sidestep the taboo.
Now racing revenue is running second to the not-slots, and there’s a new term for these mongrel joints: racinos.
18. Park Plaza
Those who remember the days when Park Plaza was a series of shops connected by open breezeways, with a little waterfall and goldfish pool, are getting long in the tooth. It was a place to shop, but has become the place to shop for the mall-ishly inclined.
A complete reconstruction in 1988 turned it into a 1 million-SF masterpiece, and it’s been tweaked and glamorized since. It maintained shopping supremacy in midtown Little Rock and saw its neighbor and competitor University Mall go belly-up in the face of the stiff competition.
Now Park Plaza has its eyes on a new competitor, the upscale Midtowne Little Rock center across University Avenue. Ironically, for those into irony, Midtowne is more like the original Park Plaza, and the popularity of enclosed malls continues to dwindle.
19. Quapaw Bathhouse
Along Hot Springs’ Bathhouse Row, nothing stands out like the gorgeous Moorish tiled dome of the Quapaw Baths & Spa. But for 20 years, starting in 1984, that dome capped an unused building, slowly deteriorating with many of its kin along that stretch of road. The heyday of the spring-fed spa was gone, it seemed.
Fortunately, in 2004 the National Park Service began to resurrect the Quapaw and six of its neighbors. Last year, Hot Springs architects Bob Kempkes and Anthony Taylor, general manager Don Harper and New York investor Steve Strauss reopened the remade Quapaw as an upscale spa and, of course, bathhouse.
20. Port of Little Rock
Usually, when someone says "port" people think "ocean." But the Arkansas River is navigable by barges up to Tulsa, so the Port of Little Rock made sense to those who saw the economic potential.
Opened for business in 1969, it was primarily a barge depot for many years. But in recent years, the port has become a major industrial park, landing businesses that include Indian pipe makers Welspun Gujarat Stahl Rohren Ltd. and Man Industries, Danish windmill blade manufacturer LM Glasfiber, Sage V Foods of Los Angeles and Boyd Metals of Fort Smith.
21. River Market
Downtown Little Rock was once a place many worked but few, if any, played. At 5 p.m., everybody cleared out.
But some folks – like developer Jimmy Moses and the Downtown Partnership – had an idea: Build a couple of large, open-air pavilions and a huge, closed-in "market hall" along a stretch of West Markham Street near the riverfront amphitheater, and call it the River Market.
When the $2.5 million project opened in 1996, it infused downtown with life, and soon bars, restaurants and other businesses were clamoring for space in neighboring buildings. Including the Clinton Presidential Library, which extended the district to the east, more than $1 billion has been poured into the River Market’s transformation.
22. Reynolds Razorback Stadium
The football Hogs are a beloved institution in this state, no doubt, but in the NCAA the only quantifiable measure of fan adoration is how many fannies you put in the seats.
With an SEC-trailing capacity of 51,000, the University of Arkansas went for the gusto in 2001 and expanded its stadium to 72,000 seats; a major cash infusion from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation accounted for the naming rights. In what might be called validation of the If You Build It Syndrome, just five years later capacity was increased by another 4,000.
23. University of Central Arkansas
It’s hard being the poor cousin of the University of Arkansas, especially when you’re not even part of the UA system.
But plucky UCA in Conway fought for respect over the years. Starting out as Arkansas State Teachers College, the school’s partisans have worked to improve its campus, its endowment and its reputation. From about 6,000 students in the mid-1980s, UCA grew to 8,500 by the fall of 2000.
In 2002, Lu Hardin, charismatic former legislator and director of the state Department of Higher Education, was named president, and his aggressive marketing of "the Center of Learning" and an equally aggressive building program increased enrollment by more than 50 percent over the next six years.
By the fall of 2008, enrollment was just a smidgen under 13,000, but Hardin was gone after a flurry of controversial revelations about his compensation and financial management.
24. West Little Rock
For the longest time, the world – OK, Little Rock – ended at Shackleford Road. Sure, there was something out beyond that boundary: Some pastures, Pinnacle Mountain, Lake Maumelle.
Developers had a sharper eye – particularly landowning Deltic Timber Corp. of El Dorado, which started developing Chenal Valley in 1986.
With an annexation-friendly city board willing to weather the critics’ complaints of sprawl and the cost of services, houses started going up, aimed largely at upper-middle-class and wealthy families.
As a sizable population (and even bigger tax base) migrated toward the sunset end of town, west Little Rock gained political influence. But some services, such as schools and parks, are only beginning to catch up with the increased demand.
25. Windstream Corp.
It’s likely Verizon wouldn’t have been as ardent a suitor for Alltel had the company not spun off its landline business as Windstream in 2006.
A function of Alltel’s $9.1 billion merger of wired service with Valor Communications, the creation of Windstream wasn’t the shedding of dead weight. Windstream launched with 3.4 million customers in 16 states, making it a player in rural communications from Day One.
These days, with landlines being shed in favor of cell phones, the company is concentrating on bundling broadband, digital TV and residential service. And with Alltel first taken private and then sold to giant Verizon, Windstream is one of the largest and most profitable public companies headquartered in Arkansas.
(Click here to see all the stories in our anniversary edition. Or click here to flip through each page of the edition in this special free electronic version.)
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