[00:00:00] Speaker A: You Dixon Street. What comes to mind when you hear those words? If you've lived in Northwest Arkansas for a significant time, you've undoubtedly had some kind of experience with, or rather on Dixon. It's 155 years old now, and needless to say, there is a rich history there. We're going to talk about that on this week's edition of the Know the News Podcast.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: You.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm Dave Perozic, managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and your know the news host this week.
Typically, we do this podcast as a way to feature one of the stories we are working on right now that we plan to publish in the next few days and give you a little preview of what's coming. This week is slightly different in that we're talking about a story that already ran. In fact, it ran Thursday, and you can find
[email protected] Although it's important to note, that was only the first in a three part series all about Dixon street by our associate features editor, April Wallace. And as luck would have it, I've got April Wallace with us here today. Thanks for joining us, April.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Thanks for having me, Dave.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: I'm also pleased to introduce Dr. Patricia Ralph, and she is an arts learning specialist at the Walton's Arts Center. Is that right?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: That's right, Dave. Thanks.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: At the Walton Arts center at Dixon Street Institution. Of course, Dr. Ralph was one of April's sources for the very informative story that ran Thursday. Thanks for taking the time with us, Dr. Ralph.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: It's a pleasure. I'm always grateful when the Democrat Gazette covers the history of our town, our state, our region and the close look at this great street that's worthy. I'm glad you did that.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So, April, let's start with you.
First, tell us about your Dixon street series and where did the concept come from?
[00:02:18] Speaker C: Well, as many of my stories begin, I actually had someone write to me.
This particular person is associated with experienced Fayetteville in some manner through the PR side.
And he Once Upon a Time had also written for the Democrat Gazette out of Little Rock and remembered a time when they had profiled a cat on some well known street and decided to send me an interesting creative idea. Since I have long done profiles for the Democrat to Profile Dixon street, which I thought was a very interesting idea. Unfortunately, we can only profile people. That is one of our requirements. But I told him what I could do and what was very interesting to me because he said, it's 155 years old this year, was that I could feature its history in our town because that is sort of the thing that we do there. We take a look at the community, especially in our town, with a lens to the good parts, the improvements. And Dixon street has certainly improved in the last century and a half that it's been around. So that's where it began. He helped me get in touch with a number of people who have lived, worked along the street, cared very deeply about it, and had a lot of involvement over spanning decades. And Dr. Ralph is one of those.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: So could you give us kind of, for those who haven't gotten to it yet, give us a brief recap of Thursday's story. That rant Thursday, and what can we expect in the next two installments?
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Sure. In Thursday's story, I focused primarily on the very differences that we saw from the early eighty s to the early 2000s.
As Dr. Ralph might tell you, it was a very different place, maybe not the safest one at all times, that it was a bit of a guy's street, which I found interesting.
So the first piece focuses on how it managed to go from that to the very family friendly place that it is today, where you see folks going to the Walton Arts center for Theater and Music and Comedy, that it's a place for many types of entertainment now, not just bars, not just nightlife.
That's the focus of piece one.
Coming Thursday, December 14, is a piece by Monica Hooper about the history of George's majestic Lounge, which has been a mainstay of Dixon street for 96 years now.
And I know she'll do a very good job with that. In part three, we'll go a little further back, give a snapshot of the decades leading up to the then a look to the future of what the current leaders are hoping to plan for Dixon Street.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Great.
So as we mentioned, Dr. Ralph, you're a prominent part of her first story.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and then particularly how you made your way to Fayetteville?
[00:05:44] Speaker B: I am just a working theater artist.
A kid who grew up in southeast Kansas, lived in every western state. I have loved the theater ever since I can remember. I grew up in a large family, and my family allowed me to become a storyteller and to love the theater and to have voice lessons. And when I graduated from high school, I went to the University of Kansas. I majored in theater. Then I did advanced study in speech and drama. I met my spouse in the theater, worked in the theater with him. We moved to Los Angeles, and from Los Angeles, my spouse, Roger Gross, was invited to be the first chairman of the drama department and a drama professor at the University of Arkansas. And so we moved to Fayetteville. Roger had seen the town, but I had never visited the beautiful state of Arkansas. But it was close to the middle section of the country, so I knew that it was a beautiful state. And all my pals in California said, oh, yes, Arkansas is the state to go to. In fact, Arkansas and Tennessee are the last remaining states that, in their language, that aren't completely ruined ecologically. So I thought, well, this is a beautiful place I'm going to. And I could see right away the town was beautiful.
And the street we're talking about for folks that may not have been to Fayetteville is a beautiful, long, rolling street.
Part of the street of Dixon street is on the hill. The campus, and a beautiful, modern, and a campus that has old architecture as well as new architecture sits there on that hill. And then the street rolls down to the entertainment district. It's the district where Georgia's majestic Lounge is. It's where the Walton Art center is. It's where parking garages are. It's where lots of great restaurants are. AnD then up the hill it goes. It goes to the intersection of college, which is a very historic intersection in the history of the Civil War in Washington County. And then up the hill it goes to beautiful Mount Sequoia.
And so learning the arts, business, oh, beautiful churches are along the way on Dixon Street.
Transportation, College Avenue, more retail and business.
And then up the hill to a beautiful retreat on Mount Sequoia, a place where artists can go and a residential area where people live. That's everything. That's everything in one street. And April was right. I didn't really know the history of Fayetteville. So as I lived here, I learned our wonderful history, and I learned more of the history of Dixon Street. But it was a busy college thoroughfare and a place that took some getting used to. And honestly, in the evening, I was either working at the theater or I went home. But I would not go down to Dixon street and socialize. But nowadays I am on Dixon street, socializing at night. And so that's the brief history of Patricia Ralph, Dixon Street Thriver. But a new kid that came and has lived here long enough to be called a Dixon street regular because I work and live here. Does that give you the picture?
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about your first impressions of Dixon.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: It's a place, it was a combination.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Early 80s, is that right?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Yes, in the early 80s. In the early 80s, when I first saw it, it was a combination of something that was educational, something that was alive, something that was grimy and dusty, something that was welcoming and friendly, but not a place to wander alone.
And I moved here from Los Angeles. So I was a person who was very skeptical of when I might have to tap someone on the shoulder and say, excuse me, but I need your help. Could you give me directions from here to there? Or I have a flat tire. Could you direct me to someone who could help me fix my tire? I would have been very skeptical to ask a stranger on Dixon street for that kind of help.
But in fact, people that I stop on Dixon street or people that I talk to on Dixon street are more than happy to give me advice on where to park, where to eat, how to get help. If my battery is dead, or to say, I have jumper cables, I will jump your car. Wait just a moment. And I have been at work at Walton Arts center, where people on Dixon street, including young people and older people who need help, they come to Walton Arts Center. They have asked me personally or volunteers that I worked with. I need your help in this or that way. And I can tell you we are ready to help folks on Dixon street in any way that they need.
In the time when I first came here, it was a place where protest could be expressed, where personal, political or religious views could be and were boldly expressed.
And now if there is a movement, a protest, a coming out to express our feeling as a community, pro or con, about something, if there is a moment when we're going to celebrate who we are and what we're doing, it's going to be on Dixon Street. And so now I see Dixon street, over time, change to a place where it's now treelined. It's not so grimy. It's a place that when we have school shows, the Yellow school buses are driving down Dixon street to park and drop off their students to see performance of Alvin Ailey dance or an opera or a Chinese acrobatic company, a company from around the world. Down the buses. Down the street, the buses come, and children walk hand in hand, lined up down Dixon Street. Their schools are close enough that they simply take the route on Dixon street on a fair day. That's Dixon street today.
And that's because our civic leadership has developed an entertainment district downtown. Our equity theater is there, parking garages are there, fun restaurants. And I have teacher events at Walton Arts center all the time. And I can tell you, teachers come from all over the state of Arkansas to Walton Arts center to have a training in and through arts education. That's what I do.
The funnest thing is to do our training at Walton Arts Center. LEt's go to lunch on Dixon Street. And so lots of ladies are out there having lunch on Dixon Street. Well, that's different now from when I first moved here, and I'm so glad that change has taken place.
I'm so glad that change has taken place and that all of these changes have made great improvements to this old historic street.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: We're going to pause for just a minute. We'll be right back with April Walsh and Dr. Patricia Ralph after this brief message.
[00:14:31] Speaker D: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit nwanline.com podcast 23 to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and rivervalleddemocratgazette.com. Or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: April, tell me more about, if you will, that you're reporting on this particular piece.
How were you drawn to Dr. Ralph and your other sources? How did you end up talking to them and what led you to them?
[00:15:24] Speaker C: Well, I was introduced to Dr. Ralph by experienced Fayetteville staff, who very kindly put me in touch with her, and I really enjoyed speaking with her, first of all. But I thought that it was really great to have someone who'd been here for, I've been here 15 years. I have friends who have been here 2030. But to have a little broader perspective is always helpful. That way you have a mix of experience that you can draw on.
And the other source is Bootsy Ackerman, who was the she headed up the downtown Dixon enhancement project in the early 90s, shortly after she arrived here.
And I'll be honest, I met Bootsy when I was an intern during graduate school for a congressman's office, and that's where I first became acquainted with her. And we had lunch sometime in the last year to catch up, and I mentioned this series to her and my interest in it, and she said, well, you know, I led the charge for the improvements, right? And I said no.
So we sat down and we spoke about that, which started with her just realization that Fayetteville's downtown area was so much like the town that she had just moved from, which was Winter Park, Florida. It's set up in a very similar way Winter park was connected to university. It had a street full of restaurants and arts festivals and entertainment. It functioned very similarly. But when she arrived to Fayetteville in the 90s, she saw many of the same things that Dr. Ralph did. It was a little rundown. It was a little in need of some care. And she recognized that many business owners wanted the same things, but they didn't have a centralizing sort of unit. And she wanted to be that instead of putting your money in different places. And maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
She helped, through the Fayetteville Chamber, to form a nonprofit. That way, they could pool their resources and make the most out of it, and that's what they did. It took them longer than they planned, but that was in part due to breaking into incredibly old infrastructure and having to do it properly and making sure that they wouldn't have to immediately come back and do it again soon.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Dr. Ralph, what are your memories of that development, that project?
[00:18:12] Speaker B: A feeling of gung ho, a feeling of gladness. That leadership in our community saw the value of this area, this street, and had a big, big vision. And anybody can have a big vision, but the finding the funds, raising community support, bringing the creative entities, the hardworking people that it takes to run a restaurant or a theater, a functioning theater or an arts classroom takes a lot. And so Gung ho that our leadership had a vision big enough and was willing to do the work.
And so many other people in our community are much more wise and experienced in the details of how all of the changes occurred and the process of improving the entertainment area and Dixon street itself, it's still ongoing. And you and April probably know more about those details than I do. But I get to see the building and the action going on on the street every day when I go to work or go up to the University of Camp, the university campus for some event.
These are good things. And I am always glad. I was glad then, and I'm glad now that it's still going on, because it's got to be an ongoing process. There's never going to be a point where the city of Fayetteville and our community is just going to stall. Our university is advancing.
The culture and technology of the entertainment industry is expanding and advancing. It includes everyone.
We're going to grow. And so our municipal development needs to continue to grow, and this street will continue a rich history.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Is there any changes that you would like to see if you could wave a magic wand? And.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: I'm big on spaces being well lit. I like being able to park in well lit municipal garages and I park there a lot. And I come there with older family members and girlfriends, and I bring visiting guest artists to our community and we go to Dixon street, we eat there and we go to the entertainment institutions there on Dixon and West. So being able to have well lit areas to park and to look around and to be able to see the community, I'm kind of a big person. So having space where I can walk easily and not be bumped off of the sidewalk or have to step off the sidewalk because the moms in the strollers actually need the right of way on the sidewalk. And we have moms in strollers coming to see plays at Walton Arts Center. So I like wide walkways and beautiful light. I line up with our leadership. They love green spaces and I'm really proud of our community building, green bike and walking spaces, and I do both.
These are the things that I like and the things that our community is doing. I feel mighty lucky about that.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: April, is there anything that you've learned working on this series that particularly surprised you?
[00:22:45] Speaker C: I will save some of it for part three, so readers will have to come back for the truly surprising, and I hope they do because for part three we are including a quiz.
Test your knowledge of if you remember where this was on Dixon street, or if you even knew that it was on Dixon street in the first place, it will have a ride in element. Tell us your experience of Dixon street and we'll have some historic photos and we'll have some throughout the decades that the Democrat has taken as well, a lot has surprised me about the history of Dixon Street. And I don't want to give it all away, but essentially it has just changed in such huge, fundamental ways, even in our recent history, which is kind of the main takeaway.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: It's fun to see Dixon street, the selfie location, because I see lots of people taking their photograph not only on our campus, they take their photograph there plenty of times, but on game day or on just a fair day, I mean, people come right down to Dixon street and they want to get that shot going up the hill to beautiful Old Maine or up the hill the other direction because the color of the trees is so beautiful. Yeah. Selfie spot, Dixon Street. I'll meet you.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: There.
Anything else that either of you wanted to add?
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Thank you for paying attention to history. It's history of our buildings, our institutions, our streets, our community, the people in our community.
All of that's really important and in everyone's busy lives. I'm grateful that the Democrat Gazette takes the time to slow down and really give the picture of such a wonderful place as Dixon Street. Thank you.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: Thank you too for your perspective. We really appreciate you being a part of this.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Thank you, Dr. Ralph.
Again, you can catch our series on Dixon street this month in the northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
Want to share with you a brief preview of some other stories we have coming your way over the next few days.
Pilot parent Choice programming option could be part of the solution as the Fayetteville School District seeks to alleviate overcrowding at McNair Middle School. Al Gaspany gives us a story on that.
Rogers Fire Chief Tom Jenkins is retiring, so the city is on the hunt for a new chief. Rogers reporter Campbell Roper reports on how that search is going.
The new location of the Child Safety center in Springdale will host a grand opening ceremony next week. Doug Thompson will tell us about the center and what it offers the community.
And back to Fayetteville. A study of the police department's CRIS Intervention Response Team was recently published in a scientific journal and is providing the department crucial information for evaluating the program, according to its authors. And the city's police chief, Stacey Ryburn, reports. We also have news from the River Valley. Monica Brick will have a story about the Fort Smith board of directors and its decision to hire a Wisconsin based firm to review the city's internal audit of the Animal Haven Animal Shelter. That audit stated the shelter overcharged the city $102,000 for its services, and this week in Greenwood, the city took the next step in establishing higher rates for water and sewer services for the first time in over a decade. Thomas Asante brings us that story.
Our Sunday what's Up? Section is brimming with arts and entertainment news. This weekend, you'll find stories about the third annual artist of Northwest Arkansas Six by six silent auction on December 14 Port Smith Little Theater's wacky Taggy Christmas Spectacular, western Arkansas Ballet's production of the Nutcracker, and the Happy Holy Gaze Winter concert in Springdale.
All of this and more will be available to our subscribers on our tablet and smartphone apps and our websites, nWaonline.com and rivervalleydemocratgazette.com. Thanks, as always, for listening, and thank you for your support of local journalism. Know the News is a weekly podcast brought to you by the newsrooms of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the River Valley Democrat Gazette. Again, I'm Dave Perozic, your podcast host this week. Have a great weekend. And until next Friday, so long.
