It's 9AM
The with the Mall lied.
Or maybe he just thought he could speak the change into existence.
I knew better than to get my hopes up.
A shallow dive into his past and reputation showed he liked to talk up big projects that never came to fruition.
And maybe the project isn’t all the way dead, or maybe it’s just delayed because his financing “fell through.”
But a couple of real estate guys I’ve talked with said it would be cheaper to raze the place than drop 40 or 50 million into it to bring it back to life.
Which is the story of Pine Bluff, I think.
People get excited when promises are made, but the people who are telling us the promises are delivered must be speaking about something else.
Or somewhere else.
Just after the Mall was announced, young black men went on a killing spree and shot up each other to the tune of eight or so in a few weeks.
Arrests were made, but the fact remains that the shootings were out there, on the news and contributing to the reputation of America’s worst city.
And all for what?
Gang signs? Harsh words? Wrong looks?
Or maybe they were mad at the rug pull the Mall man made when the deal for bringing back the icon fell through.
After all, one of his promises was a place for local youth to go.
For employment.
For the food court.
For hanging out.
I guess part of me is disappointed in me, because I believed him.
Believed enough that I wanted to go work with him and bring the vision to life.
Even if I knew the talk was too ambitious to match the reality of where we were.
And the price tag seemed made up half the time.
The whole “fool me once” thing.
It’s easy to fall for fast talkers with big promises.
Every one of us does it every four years without fail.
And without fail, those fast talkers fail us.
It makes it hard to know who to trust and who to believe sometimes.
It is no wonder we have become a collective of skeptics, a bunch of “show me first” types.
It’s sad because there are signs of progress in the city.
A new Innovation Hub going up on sixth street, dirt work at the go cart track and a little activity on Main Street.
Plus the promise of a Cultural and Blues Center that will draw thousands of tourists each year to the area.
Thousands.
I presented a plan to a man to build a series of dirt bike trails in our largest park, Regional Park, to draw the same number of people at 1/10 the cost.
He said they were working on it.
I wrote up a plan to bring thousands of people per weekend to a series of adult and youth softball tournaments at the largest sports complex in LA, and to use that money to kickstart improvements, growth and new construction for it.
He said the plans were in the works.
But that was five years ago.
And no work is done.
No bikes.
No balls.
So when someone comes in with a dream and a plan and makes a splash for change, it’s easy to believe him.
Because we want to believe in him.
The higher the hope, the harder the fall.
And yet…
Conway built their ballparks into weekend destinations so that from March til October, the city is packed most of the time with kids in uniform.
Eleven kids per team, double parents on average.
All going out to eat. Some staying in hotels.
Snowden Grove in Southaven did the same.
Except they added soccer fields, and playgrounds and walking paths and fishing ponds and an amphitheater.
Plus the city approved a bunch of mixed use stuff around it, so the people who go to play have a place to eat and stay, AND people who live around it to support everything during the week.
Maybe the Mall wasn’t the right idea.
Maybe a better idea is coming.
Or has already been given and just needs the right voice to get it going and make it happen.
Someone to make the people say “What’s next?”
Instead of “Why does this keep happening?”
Can a city be cursed?
And what exactly does it take to break the curses, the cycle, the stigma and the idea that all of the hard work is for nothing?
These are things to ponder and think about.
Because even if the Music Man for the Mall didn’t follow through on his promises, someone will.
Someone will stand up and do something.
Someone will make the change.
Someone will.
Someday.
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Pine Bluff sounds like a Southern version of Niagara Falls. We were a thriving city up until the late 60s, now we are not. Every so often, someone comes up with a grand idea to revive the city, everyone gets excited, then it falls through.
Meanwhile, a few people are doing small things to bring up the standards of living here. A small, but well planned, blues festival. It doesn't bring thousands of people into the city, like the water park was supposed to. It brings in a couple of hundred folk, but it goes on every year while the park closed after one poor season.
The answer, to me, is not some silver bullet project but little efforts to make incremental changes.
That doesn't get the big publicity or excite the media, but it lasts.