Dreaming of a Better Downtown

PINE BLUFF REVITALIZATION EYES NEXT BOLD STEP

BY DWAIN HEBDA

A rendering from Taggart Architects of the central mercantile which will support the surrounding small businesses in Pine Bluff. RETAIL incubator

TAGGART ARCHITECTS

Community officials are touting a bold new vision for a section of Pine Bluff’s downtown, a design that would radically change the way the neighborhood looks, feels and functions. The Sixth Avenue District recommendations, a collaborative vision of Go Forward Pine Bluff and Taggart Architects, is the latest step in the city’s sweeping revitalization effort.

“Our original plan has 26 initiatives and, to date, we’ve completed 88% of those initiatives in the first four years,” said Ryan Watley, executive director of Go Forward Pine Bluff. “A lot of hard work has been done among our partners to get here. We are making a difference in our community and we have some exciting new things to come.”

“When we first started talking with Go Forward Pine Bluff, we saw a lot of epicenters of activity were already in place throughout the downtown neighborhood,” said James Meyer, Taggart designer and project architect. “There’s the Art and Science Center, there’s the new Main Library branch. And there’s other kinds of generators; there’s City Hall, there’s the convention center. But there’s not a lot of places in between. What we talked about is working along Sixth Avenue to create a place for the people who live there to spend time.”

The design calls for a variety of amenities, created for maximum function in a surprisingly small footprint of just the northern halves of two city blocks. Within this space are proposed an amphitheater, interactive fountains and a plaza, utilizing repurposed materials such as salvaged brick and granite wherever possible, and tied together with landscaping that provides green spaces and shade for events and activities.

A unique feature is the food hall building with rooftop bar that doubles as a resource for budding restauranteurs.

“We are taking a warehouse building and advocating creating a food incubator,” Meyer said. “Everyone says that a food truck is a great place to start in the food service business, but it’s a really expensive first start. We wanted to take this building and make it somewhere someone can come try their new restaurant idea before they sink $20,000-$30,000 into setting up a food truck. So, we did it with a food hall vibe where you can rent a small tent, basically, and try out your concept.”

The market is a similar resource. The plan proposes creating stalls from shipping containers around a central mercantile that can support small, independent businesses.

“As we’re building places for people, they should be things that support companies and services that are growing, that are new, that are entrepreneurial in nature,” Meyer said. “In this way, we take the general Pine Bluffian and give them an opportunity to build something new.”

Watley said having such amenities for startups is in keeping with spaces that not only play well, but work well, too.

“I like how the design provides an opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to get a start through the retail market or the food hall,” he said of the plan. “Both of them can serve as incubators, and it will serve a significant need to give people access to public spaces whereby we turn side hustles into actual businesses.”

The public-private project now moves to the funding phase, where Watley said the goal is to raise $6 million to $8 million to bring the plan to fruition. He said other community revival projects completed in downtown Pine Bluff in the past four years, including new streetscapes, blight remediation and building renovations, are the group’s calling card to prospective investors that Go Forward Pine Bluff means business.

“You can actually feel the change in Pine Bluff. You can see it, but it’s more important that you can feel it,” Watley said. “That speaks to the progress being made through a multitude of partners. We’re just the fuel behind the steam engine. It’s very important that we work together to continue to make significant progress.”