Yesterday morning, when Randy arrived at work, I gave him time to situate himself at his desk, and then I said very evenly, “I think Mitchell died last night.” He didn’t hear me well, or maybe he just didn’t realize which Mitchell I meant, and he rushed over to my desk to find out what had happened. Since Mitchell isn’t a person, or at least not directly, he was relieved once he heard me explain. Of course, to me, Mitchell’s death was still quite a disappointment, and I felt cheated by his relief.

Mitchell has been a mess, but it’s the kind of mess that I wanted to be involved with. It was especially messy on Tuesday night at the Board of Directors meeting. We needed a letter of support from the highest local governmental official, the mayor, to meet one of the requirements for our ADFA tax credit application. The tax credits, if granted, were to be the major funding source for the adaptive reuse of Mitchell Academy, a vacant historic school building, into Mitchell Place, a multifamily housing development. We were a discussion item, number nineteen, on the agenda, and an exciting but frustrating discussion it was.

Mitchell Academy is near Central High School and Wright Avenue, and several members of those neighborhood associations had filled out speaker cards in opposition to Mitchell. Their main contention with the proposal was that the building’s tenants would be enrollees of Building Bridges, a transitional program for graduates of UAMS Arkansas CARES, an organization that provides addiction treatment for women, particularly mothers. Apparently, people would rather watch a 40,000 square foot historic building slowly rot away rather than let recovering addicts, albeit mothers with children under fourteen, live in their neighborhood. Don’t think, though, that I don’t understand their position to some degree. It’s idealistic, and though I’d rather be realistic in this case, I will acknowledge that they did make some good points. Of course, there was also plenty of positive support from employees, board members, graduates, and other affiliates of Arkansas CARES. There were also neighborhood residents identified on petitions and by letters who supported this proposal, but when it comes to actually showing up at these meetings, the neighborhood supporters tend to be less active than their counterparts.

I’ll skip the summary of the pro and con arguments, though, because in the end they didn’t matter. The board didn’t vote either way because the city attorney extinguished the possibility of a vote on an issue related to procedure. He said (though not firmly, but just citing a legal issue was enough to shut down the process) that the board couldn't vote to write a letter of support because the proper zoning wasn't in place. I never saw a written copy of the Board’s policy on writing letters of support. (I suppose I could look for it, but this is already turning out to be a longer post than I anticipated.) The way it sounded to me, though, when the policy was read aloud multiple times, was that the board could vote to write a letter of support under either of two conditions: 1) if proper zoning was already in effect, or 2) if the owner was in the process of applying for re-zoning, which we were. Some of the directors seemed to disagree with the attorney’s interpretation, but of course their public discussion of this had to be very deferential and polite. At least four of them said they supported the proposal in general; none of the directors spoke against it, but obviously it was safer for them to be quiet. Anyway, I wish we'd at least gotten a vote, but they just closed discussion because of the legal issue. If we'd lost because they really disagreed with the proposal, that's one thing, but to lose just because of a process issue that is questionable in the first place is very frustrating.

So, in memory, I’ve posted this photo that displays Mitchell’s beautiful remains. I think that it captures the mood.