What The Heck Happened Downtown?

Argenta Arts District is doing it right.

At least as far as downtown rehab and revitalizations go.

Little Rock is failing.

Pine Bluff is falling.

A hundred small downtown’s in the Delta aren’t making it.

They sit abandoned, forgotten, dilapidated.

Haunted by the ghosts of what once was.

Haunted by a future that is uncertain.

Will they crumble and be reclaimed by nature or will they sit for a hundred more years, empty. Forlorn. Forgotten.

Not in Argenta though.

Downtown Dogtown started with one block.

They put an Irish pub in an old building and added an apartment on top.

A destination.

Once a beachhead was established, more restaurants moved in, joined by a brewery and street improvements.

A trolley delivers patrons back and forth across the river, and within blocks there’s an huge Concert Arena and a minor league ball park, plus a winding riverside bike and pedestrian trail and a five block park on the water.

Sounds idealic?

It took time, effort and a lot of investment of money and energy.