Your Town Workshop
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
August 13-15, 2006

		Eureka Springs, Arkansas, nestled in the Ozarks near the Missouri border, where rolling hills, small farms, rivers, streams, and limestone cliffs characterize the landscape, was founded in 1879 as a health resort. The town’s many natural springs and healthy mountain air attracted visitors from across the Midwest and South, and Eureka Springs became a well-known spa with lodgings scattered over its hills and hollows.
		Although Eureka Springs is a successful tourist destination, many townspeople would like to enhance the arts and cultural strengths of the community. The town is a haven for painters, potters, sculptors, jewelers, writers, and musicians, and there are opportunities both to expand living and working space for artists and to offer tourists more venues to experience and share in the arts.
		Eureka Springs features dozens of accommodations. The Crescent Hotel, on a hill overlooking much of the town, was built in 1886 and is a one of the Historic Hotels of America, a premier destination of the Ozarks.
		From the hotel, one can see across the hills the statue of Christ of the Ozarks, location of the Great Passion Play.
		Here is one of several stone cottages at the Stone House B&B.
		Eureka Springs has a trolley system that carries visitors up and down the steep hills of town. Narrow streets, limited parking, and a local desire to limit the use of cars downtown contribute to the trolley’s success.
		The Your Town: Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design workshop of August 13-15, 2006, focused on designing an Arts and Culture District for Eureka Springs on North Main Street. The aim was to develop concepts for a pedestrian-friendly area with galleries, artists’ living quarters, restaurants, parks, and other street amenities. The challenges involved re-designing parking areas, rehabilitating historic abandoned buildings, designing suitable infill development, designing a pedestrian walkway, and enhancing existing green space.
		Many of the buildings in downtown Eureka Springs are made of local limestone. This is the upper portion of North Main Street, part of the proposed Arts and Culture District.
		Basin Park is built around one of the main springs of downtown.
		Ed McMahon, Senior Fellow at the Urban Land Institute, was the workshop’s keynote speaker. He spoke about the economic benefits of preserving community character to an open audience in the town’s auditorium.
		Glenna Booth, workshop coordinator (the town’s CLG coordinator and Economic Development Coordinator), led workshop participants on a tour of North Main Street.
		Participants studied the parking lots and sidewalks along North Main, imagining buffer designs and ways of tying the streetscape together.
		Along North Main are “respite areas,” like this natural spring and pocket park, which could be enhanced and made more inviting.
		Participants visited the Harris Gallery, a sculpture studio that is one of the cornerstone features of the proposed Arts and Culture District. Here there is no sidewalk on either side of the street, and overhead wires detract from the street scene.
		Sculpture atop the Harris Gallery.
		Across from the Harris Gallery, a complex of new spaces for artists to live and work is under construction.
		This charming building is another asset of North Main.
		North Main has a handful of restaurants for visitors, including several outdoor cafes.
		Workshop participants pose for a photo in front of the Ice House, an abandoned limestone structure at the bottom of North Main. This “white elephant” building, which is for sale, could become a gallery, art studios, visitors’ center, theater, or a combination thereof.
		The workshop broke participants into small groups to solve design problems. Here one small group explained their conceptual design for North Main.
		Mayor Harrison (left) and our one teenage participant (right) explained general design ideas for the Arts and Culture District.
		Another small group worked on details of a pedestrian walkway and mini-parks along North Main.
		Daniel Carey (left) and Paul Esterer (right) discussed possibilities for rehabilitating the Ice House with participants.
		The Your Town workshop resulted in conceptual designs for the Arts and Culture district, specific drawings and ideas about design details along the street (sidewalk, parking lots, parks), and a very specific process for bringing the Ice House back to life as a focal point of the community. For more information, e-mail info@yourtowndesign.org.