POA Markets HSV, Arkansas

Partnering with Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism

The POA’s marketing team has obviously been very busy in their attempts to market HSV, Arkansas. We sent away for a wonderful marketing publication from the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and received a beautiful glossy magazine. The title is “living in Arkansas – RelocateToArkansas.com

The cover says “Move Here! Cost of Living, Housing, Quality of Life – see why Arkansas is ranked among the best in America”. This cover also has a beautiful natural setting of a lake, mountains, trees and much more. We opened up the shiny publication and what to our wondering eyes does appear, but a nice advertisement on the very first page for Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. It is nothing fancy, but it is front and center and gets the point across, which is “notice us”! And sometimes simple is best. Note the subliminal message that HSV is first! Very nice touch.

Oaklawn Gaming is Nice Selling Point

A few pages later, there is a also a nice advertisement for Oaklawn Gaming and Racing. That looks really exciting! There is an upbeat photograph of a well-dressed, attractive older couple sitting at a gaming table and a paragraph of descriptive verbiage that really makes us want to go to Oaklawn. That will be helpful to bring people to the area, we are certain. This magazine is really nice and well done, chock full of good information.

Natural State

So many natural scenic-type photos in this magazine. Oh look on page 52 of this wonderful magazine there is an article titled, “Banking on the Natural State”. Here it talks about how Arkansas is a great place to live, raise your family and in increasing numbers, retire. Very good, they mentioned retirement.

We keep looking. this magazine has a ton of beautiful natural pictures. It makes us want to visit or move here. Oh, nevermind, we already did. A lovely article, located near the back talks about Hot Springs Village. This article contains photos, interesting data, and descriptive phrases. It sounds really great.

CMP in the Marketing Magazine

Wait a minute, what is this? The second paragraph states, “The new Comprehensive Master Plan for Hot Springs Village takes advantage of the community’s incredible scale, which is roughly the size of Manhattan, layering in new cultural experiences, expanded opportunities for recreation, retail and restaurants and new homes and home types throughout the community.” Manhattan, restaurants. retail.

So many HSV restaurants are POA owned and subsidized with our assessments. An upscale grocery store is being developed, and that is the shopping we need. All in all, this second paragraph of the article sounds a bit like new urbanism.

Median Age in HSV

Then the article talks about our median age being 68, but has dropped appreciably in recent years as more families…. The article goes on to talk about 1,000 resident students and the different schools in the area. Do we really have 1,000 students? Maybe we do. Wonder what the median age was a few years ago? I bet it hasn’t gone down by much. I seem to recall reading on the City-Data website that the media age was around 68. Here it is: City- Data, HSV Median age in 2010 was 67.8 years. Hmm, that doesn’t fit in with what the magazine says. They must have made a mistake or maybe City-Data did.

They are Not Giving Up

So much of what is in the magazine is really, really superb work. It is impressive. But we are at the same time experiencing a sense of disappointment as reality sets in. They are not going to drop the Comprehensive Master Plan idea. They are not going to drop the idea to urbanize this beautiful village, forever changing the very fabric of our composition. No intentions whatsoever of dropping this misplaced idea. Not only that, they consider it to be a major selling point, so much so that they mentioned it in the second paragraph of the article.

All-in-all Advertising Efforts Were Good

Folks, all-in-all, this is a wonderful magazine. Please do not think we are criticizing the magazine and part of what is said about HSV is spot on, we are just sad that management did not listen to us when we voted down the amendment proposals and told them, “no, we do not want new urbanism and we do not want the CMP as it is”. We know we need a plan and we need one fast, but not this plan. Please POA management listen to us, and change your marketing of HSV, Arkansas. Please don’t market the CMP. We can’t shout much louder than what we are. Do you hear us yet?

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