Jun
1
Living the dream
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Renovating former ballroom a lesson in patience.
By Melissa Tucker
Photo by Shannon Sturgis
As Published in Sync Weekly, Tuesday, May 26, 2009
LITTLE ROCK — By her own standards, Kerry McCoy could call herself a Big Dreamer.
The owner of Arkansas Flag and Banner and its upstairs venue, the Dreamland Ballroom, is still chasing her vision of re-opening the forgotten music hall.
The stage that once held B.B. King, Etta James, Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald is now covered in dust and bits of fallen ceiling.
Back in the early ’90s, McCoy bought the building for $20,000, but in the years since, has spent $300,000 on necessary repairs.
“I bought it in 1991 with a big hole in the roof and everyone said, ‘You’ve lost your shirt. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.’ I can’t tell you how many people told me not to [buy this building],” she said.
After spending enough to make the building “safe and secure,” McCoy started her plans to revitalize the old Dreamland Ballroom, but right away, discovered the project was bigger than she expected.
“Every time I go to renovate it, it’s just not quite there,” she said.
“First it was going to be $400,000 and I didn’t have enough money, so I got enough money for $400,000 and it moved to $600,000,” she said. “It’s like a moving target.”
Now that construction costs are rising, the project has jumped to $1 million, and McCoy said the credit crisis in the financial markets has stymied her plans to get a loan.
“Right after I spent all the money doing the architect’s plans and the engineering plans and got it approved with the city, we went to the bank the very week the banks folded,” she said.
She finally decided the Dreamland Ballroom should get nonprofit status.
“It’s got a lot of angles to ask for grants,” she said. “It’s got the music angle, the black history angle, a woman-owned angle and just plain old, historical. There ought to be something in there somewhere.”
Now she just needs to raise $200,000 to take a 20 percent deposit to the bank before getting her loan.
She hopes the nonprofit status will help her raise more money and acquire corporate sponsorships. She’s started the application process with the help of a volunteer at the Arkansas Sustainability Network and expects to have it approved in the next three months.
She plans to do as little as possible to the Dreamland Ballroom to preserve its rundown beauty.
“I’m not gonna touch it. It’s going to look just like this with wood floors, chipping plaster,” she said.
“Don’t you think it’s charming, just like it is?”
She plans to add a few more stairway exits and an elevator. Visitors will be able to smoke on the third-floor landing outside.
When completed, she’ll rent out the venue for events from weddings to concerts to conferences. She regularly gets requests to reserve the venue.
“Every week someone e-mails me and asks if they can rent it or asks ‘When is it going to be open?’” she said. “Because last October I thought it would be open by now.”
Now, McCoy is in full fundraiser mode. She’s already considering categories for donors. Those that give a lot would be called Big Dreamers, and smaller donors would be Little Dreamers.
“Then, we’re thinking about dream catchers and dream weavers,” she said. “There’s a lot of play on words for dreamers.”
May
1
Project Runway Designer holds Photo Shoot at the Dreamland Ballroom
Filed Under AFB in Print, AFB's Community Service, Dreamland Ballroom | Leave a Comment
While the Dreamland Ballroom is not quite ready to book events, she (I think “Dreamland” is a girl) has been garnering quite a lot of attention. Word of Dreamland’s enchanting aura has spread among photographers and she has been getting a lot of press. I have always felt that I could feel the ghosts of Duke Ellington and other great musicians that once played within her walls, but apparently the custom woodwork, faded and chipped plaster, and abundant windows make for a fantastic photo shoot.
When Photographer Jason Masters called requesting a photo shoot, we were more than happy to oblige. Dreamland is a national treasure and such treasures should be shared. And when we learned that the photo shoot was for Little Rock’s own designer, Korto Momolu from Season 5 of Project Runway, we were ecstatic. We had a little photo shoot of our own to record the event. Take a look. I think this proves that while it’s true that “One day you are in, the next you are out,” it is also true that beauty endures. And as sure as Dreamland was once magnificent, even in decay she is still beautiful. Soon she will be restored to her former grandeur and get a second chance at fame.
We took a few pictures to show you how cool it was.
Apr
8
Save the Dreamland
Filed Under AFB in Print, Current Events, Dreamland Ballroom | Leave a Comment
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Editorials
January 8, 2009
If Ninth Street could talk…..
Walk into the Dreamland ballroom, or what’s left of it, and you understand wny it’s called dreamland. Ther’s just enough left of the elegant ballroom to let your imagination fill in the blanks. The once vibrant night life of Little Rock’s Ninth Street lives again, if only in your thoughts.
Standing on the ballroom’s crumbling state, you catch a glimpse of another and now long-lost world. You see the dancers twirling on the ballroom floor, and can almost hear Duke Ellington’s orchestra swing through “take the A Train,” “Muy Satin Doll,” “Mood Indigo”……
The Dreamland is on the top floor of a building that’s now home to Arkansas Flag and Banner. Not too long ago, the old brick structure was being auctioned off on the courthouse steps. Drivers on Interstate 630 surely know the building. They must have spotted it time and again, but that’s about as close as most of us get. It’s just an old building on an old street where the sidewalks end and driveways lead to building that disappeared long ago.
That’s how Ninth Street is these days- lopped off at Izard Street by the interstate. In plain view but overlooked all the same.
Yes, Little Rock’s lost far more than Ninth Street over the years. The city seems to shed its skin every generation or so, giving up some priceless bit of its past for a newer, brighter, shinier face.
Not e the ongoing debat/debacle over Ray Winder Field, the old ball park that was once a gem in the city’s crown and now is just a dust-covered bit of paste. The Travelers left years ago but, after mindless dithering by the city’s would-be-leaders, the old ball field’s future-if-any is still being debated. The options: Sell the park to the University of Arkansas’ medical center to be converted into a parking lot or a future expansion, or transfer it to the city zoo for an elephant grounds. Or just keep it the same, a ball park.
None of these alternatives are particularly appealing. The vision of War Memorial Park as a real showplace, Little Rock’s answer to New York’s Central park, complete with beautiful gardens, has never caught on, more’s the pity. Little Rock would rather dither.
But at least folks want to do something with Ray Winder. There’s concern for the ballpark, interest in the property, and, even better, real money on the table, to wit” a 1.1-million bid for it from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. As far as we know, the weedy lots on Ninth Street haven’t attracted any big-money offers from outside investors. Instead its fate being debated, the street seems to have been given up for lost.
Thank goodness not everybody’s hurrying to the old strip. Some folks still see something worth saving. According to a a story in last Tuesday’s paper, the people at Arkansas Flag and Banner art trying to save the old Dreamland ballroom.
They’re getting help from a few musicians who’d like to do a show someday where Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and so many others once played.
Who can blame them? It’d be like shooting hoops ona court where Wilt Chamberlain once dribbled, a chance to relive the glorious past. Think of Preservation Hall in New Orleans. Why can’t Little Rock do much the same? doesn’t Arkansas’ capital city have lot of superannuated musicians- and young ones, too- who’d love to dream a little dream? Oh, we’d want to be there when those saints go marching in.
Driving through the pre-fab expanse of the city’s newest neighborhoods, where real architecture sticks out among the boxes, and one giant parking lot blends into another, you can’t help but feel grateful for the dreams that remain. Oh, if only we were willing to stop for a moment and commune with the ghosts. They have a lot to say- if you’re listening. Ninth Street may be gone, but a priceless bit of it still remains, a dreamland waiting to be revived.
Feb
7
Dreamland Ballroom featured in Inviting Arkansas
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Photograph by Nancy Nolan
January 2009
Inviting Arkansas features the Dreamland Ballroom in a photograph for an interview with Chip Murphy. Chip Murphy is the co-producer for Saints & Sinners at the Arkansas Repertory Theater. Saints & Sinners is the Arkansas Repertory Theater’s annual fund raiser. To find out more about the annual fund raiser or for what is showing visit :The Rep.
To read the article in full visit Inviting Arkansas’ On line magazine, January 2009 edition. The article and full image is featured on page 12 & 13.
Support your local arts.
Jan
2
Dream A Little Dream
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by Kyle Brazzel
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Dec. 30, 2008
Eclectic Band Takes Under Its Wing A Battered Dance Hall With A Glorious Past
Onzell Wright has a keen nostalgia for Little Rock’s Ninth Street, similar to the feeling some people have about Main Street. In both cases of these intersecting corridors, this is mostly nostalgia for one’s youth and for crowds. But the way Wright tells it, his particular strain sounds like an anomalous wistfulness for one-stop shopping.
Ninth Street, by Wright’s careful enumerations, was once a place where you could get your clothes dry-cleaned and study to be a beautician. You could buy a life insurance policy and a chili dog. He makes the type of businessmen who tack their business cards to laundromat bulletin boards sound like old friends.
In a way, it’s loneliness talking. Wright graduated from high school in 1962 and proceeded almost directly to The Line, in those days the nickname for Ninth Street. “That’s when I was really partying,” he says with the hint of a grin. In those days Ninth Street was the center of commercial and cultural life for Little Rock’s black population, and it was also the place to party. But when Wright returned in the 1970s to open wright’s Shine parlor near Ninth and Arch streets, the vitality was fading. Now its history is a museum exhibit, literally, at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, which opened in the fall.
As someone who came to Ninth street first to play and later to work, Wright is an exception. But it’s not only neighbors whose absence he feels “There was a lot of neon lights down here, just about as many as there was on Main Street,” Wright recalls. And there was sound, plenty of it, spilling out onto the sidewalks. wright has always situated himself near music, whether at work or not: When he operated a shoeshine stand in Little Rock’s erstwhile Sheraton Inn, he could hear Gennifer Flowers’ night club act from inside the Pebbles Lounge.
Up and down the Ninth street of his youth,” you could hear the blues, you could hear rock’n'roll, you could hear band music,” Wright says. Bass guitar hung in the air, but so, he remembers, did the bright tones of saxophone and clarinet. These days, it can be difficult to hear Wright speak over the whir of a shoe polisher and the somber chords that announce that The People’s Court, broadcast over a television set so blurry the picture is practically scrambled, is in session.
But one the right night on the Ninth Street, music- even the brassy sounds from Wright’s most distant memories- still carries over to a marginally more bustling Broadway. One can hear guitar and drums, tambourine and even trumpet and euphonium spill from the former Doc’s Pool Hall on the ground floor of the Arkansas Flag and Banner building when a band is playing, the beer keg is flowing and the door to the garage bay is thrown open.
These jam-filled parties, of which there have been a small handful, would earn Wright’s approval for more reasons than their role in bringing a groove back to Ninth Street nights. They are also pushing toward a resurrection that would provide an even more direct link between Wright’s boy hood in the area and his advanced adulthood.
The music, under a street-fair-style string of lights and within a circle of ecstatic dancers, has largely been the instrumental sound of the newish Little Rock band Eclipse Glasses, and outfit whose official motif, according to its promotional materials, is a stew of “funk, soul, electro Afrobeat, reggae and weirdo disco.” The quintet is playing in the former Doc’s tucked underneath the red-brick structure constructed in 1846 as the temple of the Pulaski County chapter of the Knights and Daughters of Tabor because they can’t yet play on the top floor.
Jazz Age Gem
But the band hope that the proceeds from the concerts will help boost Kerry Mccoy, owner of the Flag and Banner building, closer to her goal of restoring the former Dreamland Ballroom. The ballroom, later known less memorably as the Morocco Club, occupies the uppermost story of the building McCoy took over in 1991.
Obscured by peeling plaster and ribs of exposed beams it retains only a glimmer of its sequins-and-spats shine from days when it hosted Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and the proms of Dunbar High School and Arkansas Baptist and Philander Smith colleges.
“Being an admirer of all those people who played there before, I would love to be able to play there too,” says Lorenza Harrington, who supplies the horn sounds for Eclipse Glasses and methodically sets up photo collages showing Dreamland’s promise b3fore each fund raising show. “It’s a beautiful venue. The old ’30s and ’40s architecture is all around you.”
Indeed, it’s still there, although evidence is strong of the weather beating it took before McCoy’s extensive refurbishing. A scrapbook of the buildings’ evolution contains photos in which the diamond-patterned panels edging the balconies sit underneath such gaping holes in the roof that what were then downtown Little Rocks’ First Commercial Bank and TCBY towers loom int he open air. A patina the color of dried mustard has settled on the rosettes ornamenting the band-stand, lending the room a garish quality of glory gone shabby, like a once-grand dame whose hair rinse is beginning to yellow and whose lipstick applications stray off the mark.
In fact, knowing what to keep and what damaged flourishes to cut have proven so tricky that MCCoy has already fired two architects whose conceptions woud have, she felt, takent the Dreamland too far from its original design.
“The sstinking historical people that do the tax credits- they told me I had to take all the plaster out fo the way and spray it with clear shellac,” reports McCoy, who originally bought the building for $20,000 from restaurateur Mark Abernathy, who had bought the property at auction on the Pulaski County Courthouse steps.
“I said, ‘You’re missing the whole deal!’ I’m not going to loose my peachy-pink color just so I can get those tax credits.”
In some ways – coinciding, as it does, with a mini-Ninth Street revival as well as the movement to rebrand South Main Street as SOMA – the Dreamland may be the right project at the wrong time. McCoy was prepared to go before loan officers with her revised business plan for Dreamland’s eventual profit ability as a for-rent event center and concert venue the week of the initial bank-industry financial crisis.
McCoy says she is grateful for the money that goes into Dreamland restoration coffers after Eclipse Glasses organizes a charity concert. “They get me a couple thousand dollars,” she says. “But I need a million-two.” Members of Eclipse Glasses understand that they aren’t going to move the mountain of big-ticket financing with proceeds from the occasional late-night get-down. “just having music there at all brings about an awareness of that place,” Harrington says. (The next fundraising concert is not yet on the calendar, but progress on the restoration effort can be followed at the
ballroom’s Web Site, www.dreamlandballroom.com.)
Trumpeting the Cause
And the devotion to the Dreamland held by Eclipse Glasses, as well as other bands of their ilk, casts them as much Generation O as the successors to the bluesmen and rock’n'rolers who lugged their instruments cases through stage doors in Ninth Street’s heyday. Generation O is the nickname that has been applied to people college age on through their early 30s who helped president-elect Barack Obama reach unprecedented levels of campaign fundraising, one relatively minute, Internet deposited contribution at a time. The tag also signifies a new order of social consciousness, and members of Eclipse Glasses – Harrington, Zach Reeves, Kyle Carpenter, Andrew Morgan and Collin Miles – in addition to playing in other bands also volunteer for causes like the Arkansas Sustainability Network and the No New Coal Environmental movement.
Harrington, 26, learned to play on a trumpet given to him by his grandfather when his parents couldn’t afford the drum set he requested as a teenager. A leader of kung-fu-centered after-school tutorials for the Little Rock School District, Harrington is cautious about appearing opportunistic in his Dreamland Boosterism. “I don’t want it to seem like I’m just playing there so whenever it does get remodeled I’ll have my food in the door,” he says. “Before it’s established as a legitimate music venue, people should be aware of its history and not just use it as a place to make money, or boost their own popularity.”
McCoy, for her part, understands the ballroom’s appeal to emerging young musicians. “It’s part of the music heritage of Arkansas – that same bond that ties musicians together generation after generation,” says McCoy, who adds that she bought the property primarily because of the ballroom. (At one time, her goal was to have Dreamland restored by 2000.) “I want to move forward while they’ve still got time on their hands and don’t have families yet,” she says of the current youthful gravitation toward the Dreamland. “But even if they get off of it, there’ll be somebody else that falls in love with it. It’s just that kind of place – as long as I don’t mess it up. I don’t want to sell ownership of it,” she continues” but it may have to someday be Coca-Cola’s Dreamland Ballroom. But I’d like to see it before I’m 80!”
But even if she doesn’t, as Onzell Wright might tell her, it’s never too late to recapture reveries gone by. Wright’s wife maintains a collection of 45s that preserve the type of tunes that once provided the Ninth Street soundtrack. “I’m in church now,” wright says. “I’m a deacon. But every now and then, we spin some old records at the house and dance.”
Nov
5
Barack Obama elected president, FlagandBanner.com supplies
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President-elect Senator Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and their daughters Malia and Sasha wave to supporters at his election night rally after Obama was declared the winner of the 2008 presidential campaign in Chicago, November 4, 2008. Standing proud behind President-elect Obama are the American Flags, bases, and ornaments purchased from FlagandBanner.com.
Get your 2008 Election souvenirs at FlagandBanner.com today while supplies last!
Oct
23
Awakening Dreamland
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Arkansas Times
October 23, 2008
Flag and Banner owner wants to bring ballroom back.
Ninth street businesses like the Gem Pharmacy, Children’s Drug, the Elite Barber Shop, People’s Undertaking, the Vincennes Hotel, dentist Dr. Charles Hill, the Gypsy Tea Room, and others filled the African American community’s everyday needs. But Dreamland Ballroom, on the third floor of the Taborian Hall at Ninth and State streets, fed the spirit, with the music of “Fatha” Earl Hines, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Louis Jordan, and later Ray Charles and B.B. King, to name just a few of the famed musicians who played there.
Dreamland fell silent in 1970 as did neighboring businesses. But the music was back last month, when contemporary acts played a benefit concert to help in the restoration of the ballroom by Taborian hall owner Kerry McCoy.
McCoy renovated Taborian hall in 1991 for her business, Arkansas Flag and Banner. She’s completed the first and second floor, and has now turned her attention to a $1.2 million project to renovate the 8,000-square-foot ballroom, with its peach-painted balcony and box seats and stage, as an events center.
Architectural and engineering drawings are done, but McCoy laughed, her timing on getting a loan – in the midst of today’s backing crisis – has been off. But, she said, “I ain’t giving up yet. I get e-mail every week from someone wanting to rent it.” She hopes to have it open by this time next year.
Taborian Hall like the Mosaic Templars building, was built to house an insurance company run by a black fraternity, the Knights and Daughters of the Tabor. It opened in 1918, and like the Mosaic Templars building, housed a pharmacy along with doctor’s offices and the Ritz Beer Garden. during World War II, it housed the black USO club. It was built as an addition to a 19th century building that faced State Street.
McCoy has been working with a freelance historian to compile information and artifacts that tell the story of Taborian hall. “The focus of our building,”McCoy said, “is going to be just the things that happened in the buliding, the great acts that played here.” The Mosaic Templars will offer the rest of the picture of Ninth Street.
Jul
17
Travelhost magazine is a publication that features traveling ideas for cities all over the United States of America. For the Little Rock issue, the magazine features Arkansas Flag and Banner as a must for shopping in the city of Little Rock.
This is by far the most red, white, and blue you’ll ever see under one roof. There is an extensive selection of flags ranging from the traditional American, to those of every state in the union, every country in the world, and every branch of the military. There is evena section dedicated to the confederate flag. Don’t see exactly what you’re looking fro? No a problem. McCoy and her staff will help custom design your flag from a variety of materials ranging from nylon to canvas to vinyl mesh. And don’t forget the hardware to display your flag – Arkansas’ FlagandBanner.com has anything you could possibly need from pole, to the stand, to the cords and tassels, to the hardware to flag display cases.
With so much to see, you definitely won’t leave empty handed unless you take advantage of Arkansas’ FlagandBanner.com shipping service- all the more reason to load up! But don’t worry. If you get home and wish you’d gotten the American flag sunglasses with Swarovski crystals, you can always go back. FlagandBanner.com is only a few keystrokes away.
Jul
16
The Cover of New Yorker
Filed Under AFB in Print | 1 Comment
This illustration provided by The New Yorker magazine, the cover of the July 21, 2008 issue by artist Barry Blitt, shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist. The magazine says the cover is meant to satirize the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election to derail Obama.
(AP Photo/New Yorker)
Support your democratic candidate and fly your Political party flag!!
Jul
16
Arkansas’ FlagandBanner.com is a leading manufacturer of custom flags and banners for museums, events, family gatherings, government and military, or religious organizations. See examples of our Custom Portfolio online at FlagandBanner.com, or check out a small sample of one of our patriotic designs for the Old State House on the cover of TravelHost magazine’s map. This map features coupons and directions to different places to see in Little Rock. From historical sites and natural spots, to places to party, Little Rock has got it all! FlagandBanner.com is proud to call the state of Arkansas, and the city of Little Rock it’s home. We highly recommend it is a place to live or visit.