Rural Renaissance

The small East Arkansas town of Trumann (population 7,332 in the last census), which like so many Delta communities has watched its downtown die, is about to be reinvented — and perhaps serve as a guide to other rural areas — thanks to the 140-acre mixed-use development Steel Creek.

A project of Roach Manufacturing with real estate company Haag-Brown Commercial, the planned community in the northwest corner of Trumann, just 10 minutes from the Jonesboro Industrial Park near Interstate 555, reimagines a community lifestyle that connects people with regional assets, featuring vibrant commercial and retail development and diverse housing. The first phase of development is estimated to cost $3 million.

Roach Industries, a material handling company with over 70 years of history in Trumann, will anchor the innovative development with a warehouse and distribution center. The core of the development — which aims to reverse outmoded planning systems centered on the automobile — will include a trail system connecting its core market and public events space, which will feature a great lawn, pickleball courts and a park, with homes and businesses.

Though the Delta region has some of the most fertile farmland in the nation, it qualifies as a food desert for its residents, with grocery stores few and far between. A food hub will address that problem, with small farm plots, greenhouses, certified commercial kitchens and co-working spaces for technical assistance and culinary education. The hub should improve community access to healthy food while also promoting sustainable agriculture.

“The overarching design theme was inspired by the region’s ecology, which includes the swamps of the Sunken Lands on the east and rolling hills of Crowley’s Ridge on the west.

The development’s trail system will be named for the Sunken Lands, created along the St. Francis River by the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812. The Sunken Lands Trail will provide a walking/cycling route throughout the community and to the Trumann Sports Complex located just south of the development.

Developers will mitigate stormwater runoff by mimicking the Sunken Lands’ stream channels; the design both pays homage to the local ecology and provides local fill soil for the development.

Eventually, the Sunken Lands Trail should connect to the St. Francis Sunken Lands River Trail, a unique resource for canoeists and kayakers. West of town, the low-traffic roads in the rolling hills of the Crowley’s Ridge area could draw gravel bikers. Both offer an untapped recreational market for the region and could transform the vacant original downtown into an outdoor recreation hub.

Steel Creek may lay the foundation for a rural renaissance in the Arkansas Delta, with its rethinking of town planning focused on community connection, not highways and roads. Construction is expected to begin soon and take two years to complete.

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