On a Saturday morning in late May, a room full of aspiring business owners gathered at the Economic Research and Development Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), notebooks open, computers out, ready to talk money.

It was the second workshop in Communities Unlimited’s (CU) Launch Local program. The topic: how to prepare to borrow money, what banks look for, and what it takes to walk into a loan conversation ready.

Candence Brooks, with CU’s Lending Team, walked the group through what lenders look at in a business loan package and why personal finances matter just as much as the business plan itself. Chantel Poor from CU’s Community Sustainability Team talked about how connecting with the broader network of local business resources can improve your odds of long-term success.

The first workshop, held April 18, focused on the basics of starting a business: testing your idea, understanding your market, and figuring out whether enough customers and resources exist in your community to make it work. This one built on that. Next up is a lender panel on June 25, where participants will pitch their business ideas and finances directly to lenders who are ready to consider them.

A Pilot

Launch Local is funded through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. It’s designed to open several businesses in the same community at roughly the same time.

“If you try to start one business by itself, it tends to fail because you can’t drive enough traffic in and around it, especially if you’ve got an area that’s depressed,” said Dale Rutherford, CU’s Area Director of Entrepreneurship. “If we can do a cohort in multiple businesses and we can work with them collectively and do a launch on and about the same date, then now we have multiple businesses driving traffic and they’re mutually supporting each other.”

The idea grew out of a similar initiative CU ran in Memphis called MEMShop. Pine Bluff was the natural first choice.

The goal: open businesses while filling vacant or underused storefronts downtown.

Grounding the Work Locally

CU didn’t come into Pine Bluff alone. The program is built around a group of local partners, organizations already working on downtown revitalization, who saw Launch Local as a natural fit.

Pine Bluff Downtown Development and the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission are part of that group.

Jimmy Cunningham, tourism development director for the Advertising and Promotion Commission and executive director of the Delta Rhythm & Bayous Alliance (DRBA), has been central to shaping the vision for what kinds of businesses could anchor the district. The DRBA connects Pine Bluff to Indianola, Mississippi, linking, as locals put it, Bobby Rush to B.B. King, and is the cultural backbone of the city’s broader economic strategy.

Angelisa Henry, executive director of Pine Bluff Downtown Development, said the partnership with CU fits closely with her organization’s mission through Main Street America.

“When we look around downtown Pine Bluff, there is really nothing but space and opportunity,” Henry said. 

Henry said the early results are less about businesses opening and more about conversations starting. Participants call her, talk through what they learned, and work out how to apply it.

Five people came to the first workshop in April. In May, attendance doubled.

“A lot of them have not actually opened their business as of yet,” she said, “but they’re looking for ways to go ahead and get started and this is serving as an opportunity and it’s motivating them to do so.”

The People in the Room

Michael McCray is one of them. As Public Relations and Cultural Development Specialist for the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission, McCray has spent years weaving Pine Bluff’s history, its Civil War river crossings, its bayou contraband camps, its position at the intersection of more than a dozen state and regional trails, into a cultural tourism vision. His business, Delta Region Business and Arts Development, is an extension of that work: drawing investment into arts and cultural projects across the Arkansas Delta.

He plans to locate downtown. 

“Instead of fighting over the piece of pie, we want to build to bake a bigger cake,” McCray said. “As we start to create synergies in downtown Pine Bluff, ultimately things will start to work together.”

Ashley Foster grew up near Pine Bluff. She’s a licensed therapist, and her business idea, Foster Healing and Hope, would be a retail wellness shop aimed at women, stocking candles, teas, and self-care goods, with space for therapy appointments under the same roof. She wants it downtown.

“When I think about my grandmother who is no longer living, just hearing stories of her shopping downtown, even my mom talking about how great downtown was at one point,” Foster said, “I think just adding to that would be great.”

She described herself as in the startup phase: LLC in place, business model drafted, looking for the right space.

“I’m looking forward to getting started,” Foster said. “I’ve had some false starts and so now these workshops are giving me the motivation and the confidence that I need to press forward.”

For Courtney Strickland-Stewart, the business already exists. It’s her father’s. He’s been running an antiques restoration and resale shop in Pine Bluff for over four decades. She’s taking it over and renaming it Strickland’s Daughter, with plans to add classes and open a downtown retail location. Her biggest obstacle so far has been finding the right physical location, as many of the buildings have sat vacant and deteriorated.

“Communities Unlimited assists with making sure that you have the tools and resources that you need to be successful,” she said.

James Hill Jr. is in the earliest stages of getting Suavion Thowdown off the ground: a food truck serving fried chicken, fish, taco bowls, and home-style desserts, built to run from job sites to school events to catering gigs. He went to culinary school. He’s been cooking since he was six. His biggest obstacle right now is money for the truck itself.

What the program has given him, he said, is a wider view. “I learned different strategies, ideals, networking, and knowing that we have people here that actually want to see Pine Bluff grow.”

Sharon Hardman is coming at it from a different direction. She and a partner are bringing back an event planning and decorating business they started years ago but never fully got off the ground. She’s also developing a hand cream line and using this program to build both the right way this time.

“When we started, we were too afraid to get a loan,” Hardman said. “We didn’t know how we were going to pay it back. But now, since we got the information how to correctly do it, we want to give it a try again.”

What’s at Stake

A study in 2023 estimated up to $180 million in potential value from cultural heritage tourism in Pine Bluff over 10 years, phase one alone. Launch Local is designed to help the city capture some of that potential by giving local entrepreneurs the tools and connections to open and sustain downtown businesses.

“We want to create jobs, but what happens in a lot of the rural communities, they need to develop small businesses that bring capital back into the community,” Rutherford said. “It helps improve your tax base, number one, but you’re bringing that capital back into the community and you’re recycling that capital, and then you’re recharging the economy.”

“This is a program we’re planting in your community,” Rutherford added. “We want you to take ownership of the program. It’s only when you continue that development will your businesses build strength and sustainability.”

Foster encourages others to get involved and keep pushing downtown back to life.

“We need more businesses here,” she said. “Why not start here?”