Train Depot Museum Shifts to Nonprofit

Plans to build a $12 million museum/theater/restaurant project next to the Fayetteville train depot have shifted from a commercial to a nonprofit project.

Eric Parkinson, one of the people spearheading the project, said John Lewis and his three partners in Shuler Development Co. decided they didn’t want it to be a private development. Shuler Development owns the 4,500-SF train depot. The Bank of Fayetteville owns the property immediately to the east where the “train bank” is located. Lewis is president of the Bank of Fayetteville and chairman of the Fayetteville Heritage Committee, which has a long-range goal of starting a museum in the city.

“It’s gone from being a really great commercial idea to being a really great nonprofit idea,” said Parkinson, CEO of Hannover House, a video distribution company that supplies Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville as well as other companies.

“We’re just studying the feasibility of all that,” Lewis said. “It’s just a study to see what could be done. The study is not necessarily site specific. The study has to do with the cultural district of Fayetteville, too.”

Initial plans called for a three-story, 40,000-SF building that would contain six movie screens and a Smithsonian-affiliate museum. The depot would house a ticket booth and restaurant. But all of that may change now.

“The exact details are pretty fluid because it’s being decided in studies right now,” Parkinson said.

Eight MBA students at the University of Arkansas are studying the feasibility of the project as a nonprofit. Pamela Schmidt is the student adviser. From April 8-11, the students will be in Washington, D.C., to meet with officials of the Smithsonian Institution. The students are scheduled to have a business plan for the project completed in May.

The nonprofit project would be a joint venture between the city, the UA and the Smithsonian.

The plan may also require more parking in the city’s Dickson Street entertainment district.

Parkinson had announced plans for the development a year ago. At that time, the Pioneer Group of Topeka, Kan., was to be a partner, but they dropped out when it became a nonprofit project.

“There are just a lot of things we’re looking at,” Parkinson said. “It’s just a blank slate right now.”

The Smithsonian has established partnerships with 140 museums and cultural institutions in 39 states, the District of Columbia, Panama and Puerto Rico. The Mid America Science Museum in Hot Springs is the nearest Smithsonian affiliate museum to Fayetteville.

Klinger Building Off Dickson

Timothy Klinger, a Fayetteville lawyer, is spending about $180,000 to rebuild a 1,200-SF early 20th-century structure he owns at 226 N. School Ave., just south of Dickson Street, to serve as a restaurant or bar.

“I think if somebody wanted to do a restaurant there, it would be fabulous,” Klinger said. “For one reason, there’s plenty of parking.”

A city parking lot is just to the south of Klinger’s property, which he has owned for the past 10 years.

Three brick walls of the original building are all that remained after almost a century. Klinger said the brick walls dated from the 1910s or ’20s.

The last business to operate in the building, which is directly south of the Dickson Street Bookshop, was Ozark Mountain Sports, a retail store in the early 1980s. OMS occupied the original 1,200-SF space plus an addition of a similar size to the south. The area where the addition had stood will be landscaped and possibly used for outside dining, Klinger said. The roof of the building will also be designed to accommodate diners.

Klinger said 24,000 red bricks were being brought in from Oklahoma to finish the construction. The interior and exterior walls will be brick. Klinger said the building will be raised four or five feet to allow for high ceilings and give the structure a “19th-century look.” Also, he’s working with American Electric Power to move high-line wires from the front of the building to the back.

Rocky Thomas, project manager for May Construction Co. of Fayetteville, which is doing the work, said the building should be finished in May.

Klinger said the tenant will be responsible for building out the space to suit the business.