Stadium Drive

Several alternatives exist for street named Red Wolves

By Roy Ockert Jr.

July 20, 2013

I have mixed emotions about changing the name of Stadium Boulevard to Red Wolves Boulevard, as has been proposed by Arkansas State University and city officials. As an alumnus and former faculty member, I’m all for anything that promotes ASU and higher education in general. But Stadium has gone far beyond the eastern bypass that it was when I taught there in the early 1970s and lived off Aggie Road to the east of the “bypass.”

On occasion I rode a bicycle from home to the office and back, thus crossing Stadium twice a day. I wouldn’t dare try that now, with all the high-speed traffic on Stadium.

Stadium Boulevard has become the “Main Street” of commerce for Jonesboro, replacing Caraway Road and combined with Highland Drive hosting a huge percentage of the city’s commercial establishments. We should change the name of such an important thoroughfare cautiously.

What appeared to be a greased path to City Council approval has wisely been delayed for a couple of weeks — until the Aug. 6 meeting of the council’s Public Works Committee. Sometimes city officials, in their enthusiasm to do good work, get in too big a hurry. The people should always have a fair opportunity to comment except in an emergency.

This is no emergency.

As a former small-business owner, I understand the impact that such a change would have on many Stadium businesses, and there are many. Each store has its address on business cards, signs, checks, flyers, brochures, catalogs, Web sites, Facebook pages, billboards, letterheads, envelopes, etc. Some of those will be expensive to change.

The cost for the city and state to change street signs won’t be as cheap as suggested, when you consider the labor for making the switches.

Those business owners should and will have an opportunity to be heard in a public forum, and other citizens will also be able to take part, or at least to listen to the debate. If a large number of the Stadium Boulevard business owners are for it, as some informal polling by city officials suggested, I’d be inclined to favor it, too.

They will pay most of the total cost and perhaps reap the benefits.

Of course, one of the mainstays of Stadium and Highland, Liberty Bank, is apparently going to undergo a name change soon anyway, and that presumably will mean another name change for Liberty Bank Stadium on Stadium — or Red Wolves — Boulevard.

I was against changing the ASU mascot, but that battle has long been decided.

The fact is that the new mascot has been put to good use, and the recent success of ASU football teams especially has raised the level of alumni and community excitement about the university in general and ASU athletics in particular. This excitement is beginning to extend outward across much of the state and beyond its borders.

For the past year I’ve been meeting monthly with a group of my Hot Springs High School classmates while we plan our 50-year reunion this fall. Most of them are longtime Arkansas Razorback fans, and yet at every luncheon they want to know more about the latest developments in ASU athletics. I’ve never seen that kind of interest outside Northeast Arkansas previously.

So, by all means, let’s consider this proposal.

I’m not sure that this would bring anybody else to a ballgame, but it could add something to a new gameday atmosphere that has been developing.

Perhaps this isn’t the only answer, though. If the consensus is to leave Stadium Boulevard as is, some other possibilities could be considered. A name change could be applied instead to:

• Alumni Boulevard, which connects Stadium and University Loop East and is a primary entry point for fans en route athletic events and concerts.

• Aggie Road west of Stadium. It dead-ends now in the center of the campus and then resumes west of the campus. Renaming that section, also an important entry point, would be no more confusing than the Southwest Drive-Main Street junction.

• University Loop East, which runs along the eastern side of campus from the railroad tracks on the south to Johnson Avenue on the north. It’s also a main route for visitors. Originally designed as a loop around the campus, the Marion Berry Parkway cut the loop in half (OK, there is a detour through Faculty Circle now, but try to tell somebody how to get there).

• Olympic Drive, which runs from Aggie past the Fowler Center, Convo Center, baseball stadium and track, then meets Alumni Boulevard just south of the football stadium.

One advantage of renaming any of these streets is that none of them would affect businesses, only ASU organizations. All of them are at or near the center of the action for ASU athletics. For all, I like the name Red Wolves Drive better than the designation boulevard, which by definition is a wide street typically lined with trees. Jonesboro does an excellent job of getting rid of its trees.

Would that be as impressive as a main commercial thoroughfare? Probably not, but any might offer a cheap and easy compromise.

Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.