Phase one FUMC starts work at former hotel site

The Sentinel-Record/Richard Rasmussen WORK BEGINS: Diamond Excavating, a subcontractor for Hill & Cox, tears down a wall on a lot at the corner of Grand and Central avenues on Tuesday. First United Methodist Church will break ground on the first phase of a renovation project on the lot on Sunday.
The Sentinel-Record/Richard Rasmussen WORK BEGINS: Diamond Excavating, a subcontractor for Hill & Cox, tears down a wall on a lot at the corner of Grand and Central avenues on Tuesday. First United Methodist Church will break ground on the first phase of a renovation project on the lot on Sunday.

First United Methodist Church will break ground this Sunday on the first phase of a project to renovate the former site of the Howard Johnson Inn on the northwest corner of the intersection of Grand and Central avenues.

The groundbreaking, set for 1:45 p.m. Sunday, will be held in conjunction with the 100th birthday party for Mildred Smith, a church member who for years championed the idea of purchasing the property.

"When I first got here, she said in a meeting that she had been pushing to buy that property there for 30 years," Senior Pastor David Moseley said Tuesday. "She was a moving force. At the church conference, her voice was heard. So, that's how we're celebrating her birthday as a part of this."

The first phase will convert the southern one-third of the lot into a small parklike area. The northern two-thirds will be cleaned up and continue to be used for parking as plans progress, Clarence Durand, the chairman of the church's board of trustees, said Tuesday.

"This is going to be a multiyear project," Durand said. "A multiphase, multiyear project, because we just don't have enough resources to do it all at one time.

"We are going to take care of that lot in the sense that it will not detract from our church, nor our campus, nor will it detract from the city's entrance to the downtown area," Durand said.

The southern one-third of the lot will slope off to street level and the retaining wall is being removed, according to Durand.

"We are going to plant grass, perhaps put some trees in that, so that's going to kind of be an attractive, park-type area," he said.

The upper two-thirds will remain a parking lot for now. It will be smoothed out, cleaned up and striped, "so it will look attractive, I think."

"We're working with the city and the state to see if we can't do something on the sidewalks all around it, to make sure that they're not detracting" from the area, Durand said.

The project also includes improving the appearance of the walls on the back side of the education building, which were exposed once the hotel was torn down.

"We're putting a lot of attention on that being attractive. We have all kinds of ideas about what that might look like, but we aren't going to put anything on it other than paint it and make it look really nice now, because we don't know what 'next' is," as far as the use of the current parking lot, Moseley said.

"It could be that that parking lot that we have there now ... it might have a building. We don't know yet. It may not always be a parking lot," he said.

The church, under the guidance of Latt Bachelor, who was the chairman of the board of trustees at the time, board member Carl Crow, who served as legal counsel, and Beau Durbin, a Realtor who negotiated the purchase, bought the Howard Johnson Inn in 2014, Durand said.

Demolition of the hotel began in the fall of 2015. The church has since retained Hill & Cox as the general contractor for the renovation project that is now underway, and Tim Wilson is serving as the project manager. Wilson and Brian Hill both serve on the board of trustees, according to Durand.

"This year, we've kind of gotten, under David's leadership, a little more energy in terms of trying to beautify that lot," Durand said.

The purpose of the project is twofold: one, to make it a much more beautiful piece of property that is fitting with the church and, secondly, to make it a more appropriate doorway to downtown Hot Springs.

"The church really is ultimately the one to decide whether they want to put a building there, or whether they want a more attractive park area. We do have multi visions of what it might look like, in the church, and so we're sensitive to all those things," Durand said.

Durand said he was hesitant to share specific visions that have been proposed, because the public might think that is what the church has decided to do, which is not the case, at this point in time.

"We have some real visions for that lot," he said.

Later this year, the church will also be rehabilitating the iconic Jesus mosaic on Central Avenue. Durand said the foundation of the mosaic, which was installed in 1968, has shifted and must be stabilized. It will be refinished and repaired this spring, he said.

"Those projects are both making sure that this entrance into downtown is not only pretty, but kind of iconic. It's something that people can see and recognize," he said.

Local on 02/07/2018

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