[Darbro]

I have seen several posts on this forum that don't exactly cast Ft. Smith in a positive light. My questions to those who have lived in/visited this city is what is wrong with the city? What I mean is what is/are the issues you have with the city and what do you think the city/city leaders can do to fix whatever problems the city has?

[Dr. Foosball]

1. When Fort Smith thinks, "How do we bring in more jobs?" their mindset is, "What factory can we get to come here?" Now that the factories are getting sent elsewhere, Ft Smith has a large unskilled workforce, with many of them living off of unemployment and TRA.

3. The university is pumping out graduates, but the city can't provide the jobs to the students at the same rate. I graduated from UAFS and the majority of my classmates are either not working in the field for which they graduated or they moved away to find work in their chosen profession (I didn't move to Hot Springs for the healing waters).

2. When people are looking to relocate and they have an option, there is very little that Fort Smith offers that other cities do not offer. Entertainment is very limited. And shopping is alright, but not great. I can't imagine anyone with the option of Fayetteville, Tulsa, Fort Smith, or Little Rock would choose Fort Smith.

[ArkansasTgirl]

There is some growth happening out on chaffee (newly annexed land on the far eastside) and the downtown seems to be coming back to some extent. It's just not enough to hold my interest. The Marshals museum will be neat when they start construction in the next 10-30 years, or whatever the schedule is this year. I'm pushing thirty and I don't have 10 years to wait and let exciting stuff come to me.
There is quite a bit of urban decay.

If I-49 goes in the area might explode, I don't really know, we'll see what it looks like in 5-15 years I guess. But again I don't see any point in staying around and watching paint dry and the grass grow in the meantime.

[ArkansasSlim]

Dr Foosball and FriendlyFeller - before your time the mindset was Camp/Fort Chaffee. It would shut down and Ft Smith would wait for it to reopen, which it eventually would. This happened several times, then the official word came that it was permanently closed except for National Guard and Reserve training. At that point someone finally decided to be proactive and recruit industry to replace Chaffee, but as Dr Foosball posts, it appears they recruited but are not making any effort to keep what they have. In the Army we called that Recruiting and Retention and great effort was (I guess it still is) made to retain what we recruited.

I often read in the paper about communities giving big bucks and tax breaks to recruit a new industry, but I never read where they gave the same incentive to an existing industry to stay.

[Dr. Foosball]

Originally Posted by ArkansasSlim

I often read in the paper about communities giving big bucks and tax breaks to recruit a new industry, but I never read where they gave the same incentive to an existing industry to stay.

I am no insider, but from what I see and hear, Fort Smith gives no incentives to come and even less to stay. Just like the call center you mentioned moving in to Fort Smith. Here is a quote from one of the developers about incentives:

Originally Posted by The City Wire

No federal, state or local incentives were used to recruit Sykes to Fort Smith, said Beaty, who would not disclose communications with officials related to incentives.

“I’d really like to remain positive about this,” Beaty said.

600 jobs coming to former Phoenix Village Mall | The City Wire

[thewizard16]

My take on Fort Smith is purely as someone who has been there a few times for work but has no real long-term experience in the city. As such, I won't fault city leaders/etc. on what they're doing or should be doing since I honestly have no idea what they're working on.

I felt Fort Smith had a lot of really cool history, but outside of the actual Fort which the US government takes care of, the downtown area felt rundown and a mere ghost of what it obviously once had been. This isn't a unique problem, I've seen it in many cities (Texarkana is another good example and Pine Bluff may be one of the best examples in the state) and small towns that no longer have the draw they once did, or have simply shifted developments out to the edge of town and forgotten what once made them great. The city overall just had a run-down feel to it that permeated all but a few clusters of the town that I saw. The mall felt tired and there just didn't seem to be anything about the city that would make me consider living there. I normally have at least a moment or two when I'm visiting a place that I think about what it would be like to live there and what the town has to offer, but that didn't happen in Fort Smith. I don't know of any easy way to fix that, much less to pay for it, but I do hope that it can improve its image in the future because it seems like there is a lot of potential there for a nice city (perhaps like it once was).

[Darbro]

I really had no idea Ft. Smith was having such a hard time economically. It seems based on what you guys have said that the city leaders aren't very aggressive in trying to attract new industries/jobs to the area. Why is that? Are there a lot of NIMBY's, not in my back yard, in the city, whether they be residents or city leaders, who shoot down proposals to bring good jobs to town?

[aerotive]

The area is deeply conservative, in the political sense and in the not-wanting-change sense as well. It's an old city, especially in Arkansas terms, and as you might expect there's an entrenched, got-mine good-ole-boy network that actually approaches the southern stereotype. They don't care much about change, or even growth, really.

NWA's exploding growth hasn't helped, a decent number of Fort Smith's young and/or bright and/or ambitious move up there every year. Certainly more than in the opposite direction. Others go to Tulsa, LR, Dallas, etc.

As others have noted, the entertainment options are kinda crummy--there's nothing like Dickson Street or the River Market. The shopping is mediocre at best. Downtown has an aged feel.

The area is stereotyped as Republican, working-class, factory-worker heavy, nose-to-the-grindstone, church-going, family-oriented, provincial, and not into fun. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but not exactly marketable either.

[Darbro]

Originally Posted by aerotive

The area is deeply conservative, in the political sense and in the not-wanting-change sense as well. It's an old city, especially in Arkansas terms, and as you might expect there's an entrenched, got-mine good-ole-boy network that actually approaches the southern stereotype. They don't care much about change, or even growth, really.

NWA's exploding growth hasn't helped, a decent number of Fort Smith's young and/or bright and/or ambitious move up there every year. Certainly more than in the opposite direction.

As others have noted, the entertainment options are kinda crummy--there's nothing like Dickson Street or the River Market. The shopping is mediocre at best. Downtown is still mostly rundown.

Are there a lot of older old school people running the city gov't and if so, do you think the city would change for the better if they had younger, fresher faces involved?

[bchris02]

Originally Posted by Darbro

I really had no idea Ft. Smith was having such a hard time economically. It seems based on what you guys have said that the city leaders aren't very aggressive in trying to attract new industries/jobs to the area. Why is that? Are there a lot of NIMBY's, not in my back yard, in the city, whether they be residents or city leaders, who shoot down proposals to bring good jobs to town?

The problem in Fort Smith is complex, but this is one huge part of it. Every time the opportunity comes (which is not very often) for a large new development bringing jobs, shopping, or entertainment to Fort Smith, city leaders and residents do nothing but whine about it. You should have seen the drama that preceded the building of the Target shopping center. In other cities, a Target shopping center wouldn't have been any big deal but people in Fort Smith were up in arms about it. Then there was the Toyota plant, the minor league baseball stadium, the sports complex, the casino, the IBM plant, etc, all wanted to invest in Fort Smith but the city told them no. The fact that the city would offer no incentive for 600 jobs to locate in Phoenix Village Mall says a lot. The bottom line is the city is run by a good ole' boy network that has been in the area for multiple generations, and until that network is out of power, the town is going to keep declining further and further towards complete irrelevance.