Jul 26, 2008

El Dorado Springs downtown revitalization begins as dreamBy Linda GreerOzarksNewsstand.com

Four years ago Jack Tough did not think much about why so many downtown El Dorado Springs buildings were boarded up or used for storage.

The sight had become commonplace.

Tough said Kimball Long, El Dorado Springs Sun newspaper publisher, invited him in early January 2005 to her Main Street office and pointed down the street, saying, “We have to do something about this.”

“About what?” Tough asked her.

“Our downtown is deteriorated – that’s what,” Tough said Long told him as they stood on the empty sidewalk.

Retail buildings with large showroom windows were being used as warehouses with stacks of materials piled where stores once thrived. Many structures needed repairs or general sprucing up, Tough said.

“We had this gorgeous park and new civic center,” Long said. “There was no point in letting the city fall down around it.”

That brief encounter was to be the start of a non-profit organization that secured funds and motivated people to change the face of the city’s historic downtown.

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