A Venue For You, where the Prescott Revitalization meeting was held Thursday evening, used to be an abandoned mechanic’s shop. Full of oil stains and cobwebs, it had, as organizer Julie Oliver put it Wednesday night, "no hope." Now it is a polished and luxuriant event venue, transformed by the vision of its owner, Karen Ward. And that transformation, from ruin to something worth gathering in, was exactly the point.
About 50 residents, business owners, elected officials and civic dreamers crowded into that reclaimed space for what organizers billed as a community revitalization meeting — not a cure-all, Oliver was careful to say, but "a positive introduction" to what Prescott could become if enough people decided to stop complaining and start doing.
"The power to change is not in the Capitol in Little Rock or the White House in Washington, D.C.," Oliver told the crowd. "It's in this room."
The evening's main attraction was a pair of women who have already done what Prescott is only now beginning to imagine: Kayla Hartsfield, member of Glenwood Revitalization Group and co-owner of the Mercantile on Broadway in Glenwood, and Beckie Moore, Executive Director of Hope Downtown Network. Both came bearing before-and-after photos, hard-won lessons and the kind of contagious enthusiasm that may cause skeptics to start wondering what could be done with their own town’s empty buildings.
Hartsfield, who lives outside Glenwood but has poured herself into its downtown for over a decade, traces the turning point to a town hall meeting that drew just 20 people to the local library. There was plenty of talk — who owns that building, why don't we have a splash pad? — but not much action. She went home that night with something different: a fire.
"When I get something in my mind, I won't stop until it's done," she told the Prescott crowd. By the next morning she was researching Main Street Arkansas. By early summer 2023, she and her husband Ki — a bank vice president who, she noted, "tells me no a lot" — had used their own money to buy a 700-square-foot building on a downtown Glenwood side street, grass growing from its roof, no clear plan in mind.
That purchase led to more, and the need for more firepower led, in February 2024, to the formation of an investment LLC made up of six local couples — most of them born and raised in the area, most of them in their 30s, all of them wanting to see something better for the place they grew up. The group purchased five downtown buildings and began gutting and restoring them to as close to their original architecture as possible.
Then, in January 2024, Glenwood's most popular café--the one that had been anchoring everything--announced it was closing. "That one hurt pretty bad," Hartsfield said quietly. Her husband came home and said they couldn't do the job of revitalizing Glenwood alone, that one business closing could undo everything. So he came back a few evenings later with an idea: What if they opened a business themselves, in one of their own renovated spaces?
That is how The Mercantile on Broadway came to be. Hartsfield is now the proprietor of a retail shop housed in the building that once held the local newspaper going back to the 1940s. She says she is "winging it every day," but that it is doing well. Julie Oliver has returned to Glenwood multiple times, and each visit leaves her, in her words, "pumped up."
The numbers back the feeling. As Hartsfield said, downtown Glenwood's occupancy rate has climbed from 44 percent in May 2024 to 70 percent at last count, with more renovations underway. Private investment has reached roughly $1.6 to $1.7 million. Glenwood joined the Main Street Arkansas program in the summer of 2025, which has brought matching reimbursement funds to support further improvements.
"There is no blueprint," Hartsfield said. "What worked for us in Glenwood is not going to be what works for Prescott. You just have to do the best with what you have and do what works for you."
Beckie Moore told a story that began in 2012, when Hope's downtown was 65 percent vacant. Empty building, empty building, empty building — that was the streetscape Hope citizens watched deteriorate for decades. She said her father’s grocery store’s delivery entrance was strangled when one-way streets cut off his front door in the mid-70s. He died at 63, Moore said, and she suspects his last words were “urban renewal.”
The turnaround in Hope began, said Moore, the way it always does: with one or two stubborn people who refused to accept the decline. In this case it was John and Sharon Caldwell, who opened Tailgaters downtown in the former Jack’s News Stand when everyone around them said it was a waste of money. Now they are "swamped on a daily basis," Moore said, and their success seemed to give the business next door permission to paint its facade. That ripple is how revivals start, Moore said.
By 2017, enough people had gotten tired of waiting that they organized. Hope Downtown Network was born, focused on urban renewal, beautification and business recruitment. Today, Moore said, downtown Hope's vacancy rate is less than six percent. Six. From 65 to 6.
The tools Hope used were often simple. High-profile bike racks — what Moore calls "P marks" — turned into impromptu photo backdrops, with young people and older residents alike stopping to snap pictures. Colorful trash receptacles. A Paint the Town project that enlisted volunteers, local industry workers and anyone willing to pick up a brush. A checkerboard pedestrian alley, installed over just a few Saturdays by a handful of volunteers who, Moore laughed, "I don't think I'd ask to do it again, crawling over those squares." Now, on any given day that isn't storming, people can be found sitting at the little tables and chairs in that alley, having grabbed food from a nearby eatery.
Hope's signature fundraiser, Taste of Hope, charges $25 admission for a food festival set up along Main Street tables, with local restaurants competing for awards like best entree and best dessert. But the event's most important feature may be its vote: attendees choose, from three finalists presented on a display that night, which downtown improvement project Hope Downtown Network will tackle in the next year. The checkerboard alley was one such winner. A pocket park, a former condemned building's lot, is now filled with colorful planters and, most recently, tulips planted by a class of children from Clinton Primary, was another.
"Get the community involved. Let them invest. Let them pick what they want you to do," Moore told the Prescott attendees. "Because they're going to live there. You want them to approve what's going on."
Moore now lives downtown herself, in the National Building's top floor. She recently purchased a building of her own, one that will include retail space, and she said was walking through sawdust there recently. She quoted one of the workers at the site: "It's not sawdust. It's progress dust."
Near the close of her remarks, Moore offered the crowd what she called her list of ten things — hard-earned guidance from Hope's journey that she believed any town could apply. Here, drawn from her presentation, are those ten tips:
1. Involve others and utilize partnerships. No revitalization happens alone. Seek out collaborators — civic organizations, business owners, local government, schools, volunteers — and build a coalition. Partnership makes the impossible merely difficult.
2. Make it your story, not someone else's. You may look at the progress in Searcy or Batesville and either feel inspired or discouraged. Don't get stuck doing that. What works in a larger city won't automatically work in yours. Revitalization must be shaped by your culture, your climate and your community.
3. Celebrate progress, no matter how small. Small changes create huge momentum. Plant flowers and make a big deal of it. Put up new trash cans and post about it on Facebook. If you don't celebrate what you do, nobody else is going to join the party.
4. Don't forget the businesses already there. As you focus on recruiting new tenants and investors, don't neglect the businesses that have hung in there through the hard years. The foundation businesses deserve to be celebrated and supported, not overshadowed by the excitement over what's new.
5. Understand that people invest when they see progress. You need three kinds of people: doers, donors and door openers. Getting one person who is all three is a gift, but rare. Keep demonstrating momentum and the others will come. People are attracted to places that look nice — that's simply human nature.
6. Become a tourist in your own town. Local folks walk past eyesores every day until they stop seeing them. Visitors walk into town and say "what a beautiful place." Train yourself to look at your downtown the way a stranger would, with fresh eyes and without the accumulated weight of disappointment.
7. Create reasons for people to come downtown. Events, pocket parks, murals, outdoor seating, checkerboard alleys, anything that draws people to spend time in the space. And remember: tourists are wonderful, but it's the local folks who live, work and worship in your community that you ultimately serve. Don't design a downtown for visitors alone.
8. Be intentional about recruiting the right businesses. When vacancy was 65 percent, Hope was grateful for any tenant. But retail and restaurants are what draw foot traffic. While a title company serves a purpose, it doesn't draw a crowd on a Saturday afternoon. Now that Hope has reduced vacancy to under six percent, Moore says they can afford to be more purposeful about what they recruit. Start being intentional early.
9. Understand that downtown is your identity. Every downtown tells a story. Ask yourself: what do we want our story to be? The story of Prescott's downtown is just beginning to be written. Think about the present day and think about the story you will be able to tell later.
10. Do not let naysayers get you down. There will always be people who say it's a waste of money, that nothing will ever change, that you're fooling yourself. Every town that has ever revitalized its downtown heard those voices. Believe that revitalization is possible and that it is worth it. Then do the work.
Organizer and Prescott-Nevada County Economic Development Director Mary Godwin laid out the practical machinery already in motion. A committee, including Mayor Terry Oliver, city county Chamber Director Valerie Cobb, and about a dozen others, has been meeting and wants to expand. Anyone passionate about revitalization is invited to join.
As Godwin said, the city of Prescott has already taken a concrete step: ordering a two-sided digital sign to replace the current marquee downtown, capable of rotating multiple events and messages simultaneously. The project had been on the council's wish list for four or five years, but budget pressures kept delaying it. This year, Godwin said, the council and Forum Board decided the time had come.
Prescott also holds a card many towns don't: it is already a designated downtown historic district, established roughly a decade ago. That designation makes building owners eligible for potential federal and state historic tax credits. The revitalization committee plans to bring in experts to walk building owners through those incentives.
For business development, the committee is working with the SAU Small Business Development Group, which serves the Prescott area and offers free services including business planning, financial guidance and market research. Godwin described a $10,000 market analysis that SAU can perform at no cost to the entrepreneur to assess the viability of any business concept.
Godwin also called on the building owners in the room, and she clearly knew who they were, to take a fresh look at what they own. "Some of you have buildings that just need a painted handrail. Take down the vine growing up the wall. We can make a lot of difference with very small things."
Julie Oliver closed the meeting the way she opened it: with a challenge. She asked attendees to leave with a fire in them, to pick one or two small projects, set a 60-day goal, get them done, and let the momentum build from there. She reminded everyone that the most famous thing people in Prescott say, "Nothing is ever going to change,” is only true if nobody decides to prove it wrong. From there, attendees enjoyed some of Oliver’s banana punch with cinnamon rolls from Ko-Fields.
Karen Ford's converted mechanic shop, where everyone had just spent two hours getting inspired, was already evidence that it was possible.
