I love baseball, so it’s safe to assume that I smile whenever I see a ballpark being built. I’m also an advocate of downtown revitalization, so it’s especially pleasing to see a downtown ballpark.
The Town House, once a favorite of mine for plate lunches, is gone in downtown El Dorado. But construction of the baseball stadium is coming along. South Arkansas College, El Dorado’s two-year college, didn’t create its baseball program until 2021. By 2023, the team was playing in the national junior college World Series and attracting players from throughout this rural region of south Arkansas, north Louisiana and east Texas.
Bill Howard Ballpark, at the corner of West Hillsboro Street and South West Avenue, will house the college team once it’s completed later this year. It also will host various tournaments and exhibitions. The city contributed almost $6 million from its economic development tax funds, and Murphy Oil Corp. made a $10 million donation.
The stadium will have synthetic turf, a 30-foot wall in left field, a right-field video board, and a hospitality suite. The facility is being built near the college’s Howard Residence Hall. The Murphy Oil gift is also being used for the school’s first residence hall.
“The college needs to grow,” says Stephanie Tully-Dartez, South Arkansas College president. “Having intercollegiate athletics on our campus has brought new energy and new students. It makes sense to add to our existing athletic facilities as we add to our academic offerings.”
Howard Residence Hall initially will house about 100 students with space for expansion. Tully-Dartez says that area of downtown needs to be beautified to complement what has already been done at the nearby main campus, Murphy Arts District and town square.
“These improvements will help beautify the area and ultimately bring more college students to El Dorado,” she says. “Those students may eventually decide to stay here, accept jobs, have families and contribute to the overall health of the economy.”
Heath Waldrop writes for El Dorado Insider: “The idea behind student housing is to allow for continued enrollment growth by making it more convenient and by offering the kind of college experience students are looking for. At South Arkansas College, the aim is to provide student housing that’s safe and affordable in an atmosphere that’s exciting and beneficial.”
The residence hall will be a two-story building with two students per room, private bathrooms, laundry facilities and common areas.
What’s now South Arkansas College opened in 1992 after then-Gov. Bill Clinton signed legislation merging the El Dorado branch of Southern Arkansas University with Oil Belt Technical College. Oil Belt opened just east of El Dorado in 1967 as Oil Belt Vocational-Technical School. That campus is now home to the South Arkansas College Career Accelerator and the school’s Advanced Manufacturing Training Center.
The training center covers more than 14,000 square feet, including a 4,500-square-foot covered bay. It’s utilized for both credit and noncredit programs with training spaces for welding, process technology, industrial technology, industrial safety, and rail-car and tanker loading.
SAU’s El Dorado branch opened in 1975 as an extension of what was Southern State College in Magnolia. The main El Dorado campus has been used for educational purposes since 1858. A high school building was constructed there in 1905. It was the home of El Dorado Junior College from 1928-42. An adjacent gymnasium was constructed in 1940 by the federal Works Progress Administration.
Tully-Dartez, who grew up in South Carolina, became South Arkansas College’s director of institutional research and effectiveness in 2009. She was vice president for academic affairs from 2021-24, and became the college’s sixth president on July 1, 2024.
As noted in the cover story of today’s Perspective section, El Dorado is different from an average Arkansas city of fewer than 20,000 residents. Even though its population fell from 25,270 in the 1980 census to 17,756 in the 2020 census (the same kind of population losses are occurring across the entire south half of the state), business and civic leaders have worked hard to maintain one of the finest downtowns in the South.
In May 2020, Murphy Oil decided to move its headquarters to Houston. Company officials cited the pandemic, low crude oil prices, and the fact that the oil and gas industry had consolidated operations in Houston. Arkansans took to social media to declare the end of El Dorado. What they didn’t realize is that the big employer in El Dorado is corporate spinoff Murphy USA with between 600 and 700 employees. Murphy USA wasn’t going anywhere.
While the loss of about 80 Murphy Oil employees hurt, it wasn’t catastrophic. It did, however, leave a major downtown building empty. The Murphy Oil headquarters was completed in 2015. The five-story building features a four-story atrium, a 170-seat video conference center, exhibit gallery space, and a data center. It didn’t stay empty for long.
In 2022, First Financial Bank of El Dorado announced it had purchased the structure. First Financial was founded in 1934. It operates loan production offices across the country and is known for specialty lending divisions focused on mortgages, poultry, pharmacy, veterinarians, and farm and ranch operations.
In October 2024, the First Financial board appointed Sean Williams to succeed Chris Hegi as chief executive officer. Williams joined First Financial in late 2019 when it acquired First National Bank of Wynne, where he served as CEO. He has been instrumental in the growth of First Financial’s retail and agricultural markets while also leading the bank’s technological advancements.
Williams greets me in the lobby of the headquarters building. He’s like a boy showing off Christmas gifts as we walk through the 87,000-square-foot structure. There are 16 conference rooms. About 125 people work in the building.
“We have a lot of specialty teams, and this building allows us to put the right people together,” Williams says. “We’re among the leading lenders in the country to the poultry industry, for example. Those folks need to be together. There’s a farm and ranch division, a pet division and a team that serves pharmacies. We have loans in all 50 states.
“The purchase of this building represented a commitment to El Dorado and to the future of our bank. We plan to grow as a bank, and we want El Dorado to grow. I’m from McCrory in east Arkansas. I had never even visited El Dorado until I was an adult. It didn’t take me long to realize that there are great people here.
“The amenities El Dorado offers makes it easy for us to recruit people to work for the bank. And it would be safe to say the purchase of this building was a game changer from a recruiting standpoint.”
First Financial previously had its headquarters in one of the state’s most historic buildings, the nine-story Lion Oil building. Built in 1926-27 during the oil boom, the structure was designed to send a message to the rest of the country that El Dorado had arrived as a place to do business. It was designed by the Little Rock architectural firm Mann & Stern in an eclectic mix of Venetian-inspired styles. The building, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, also housed Exchange Bank at one time.
First Financial purchased the building in 1997. The company made extensive renovations, including a 2017 expansion of the retail bank branch. Bank officials felt it was important not to leave an iconic structure empty. They found a buyer in Diversified Construction & Design. Diversified, which was founded in 2015, is a full-service general contractor and regional provider of industrial, commercial and residential services. It has architectural, civil, equipment and mechanical divisions.
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
