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Butler County
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Here’s a genuine understatement for you: Andover
is growing. Wichita’s nearest east neighbor, Andover has been straining
at its seams for at least two decades, a time when city-dwellers’ desire
for a rural or at least mildly suburban lifestyle asserted itself in numbers
that make a public-works administrator sit up and take notice.
Andover public works has done a superb job
of catching up to the demand. And what a demand it has been: a two-percent
growth rate in new residences in 1989 has now multiplied five-fold. Andover
has built schools and streets with below-ground infrastructure almost continually
in the interim, as the attraction of a green and quiet place draws new employees
of the east Wichita corporate giants, Raytheon and Koch Industries chief
among them. Andover is now in close proximity to the neighborhoods and shopping
centers of far east Wichita. An oil drilling crew poking around just north
of town in October 1915 found the sticky black stuff, and El Dorado’s 85-year
connection to the oil industry began. A major refinery underpins the city’s
employment base to this day.
The city is completing a streetscape plan
to revitalize the city’s core and bring new vibrancy to a Main Street straight
out of Disney. An aggressive campaign by a group called Community Action
for Retail Revitalization has created a retail resource center for existing
businesses, a recruitment network (Internet site, databases, economic development
support and so on) for new businesses, workshops, seminars and an ongoing
marketing effort for the community.
Named for the mythical gilded man of Spanish
antiquity, El Dorado has turned its natural resources - rich farmland, exceptional
grasslands, oil of course, and a magnificent lake lying a mile outside of
town - into a diversified economy that now includes two major correctional
facilities. The facilities represent a genuine partnership between the community
and the state, with both economic advantages for El Dorado and an ideal
site for the Kansas Department of Corrections. In its mission of ensuring
public safety, the facilities involve some inmates in maintenance work for
the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, the Kansas Department of Transportation
and for community projects throughout the region.
With El Dorado State Park’s completion in
the early 1980s, the recreation industry assumed major importance in the
community. The park is spectacular. Set against the bluffs and adjoining
sea of grass of the Flint Hills, it comprises 8,000 acres of surface water,
1,100 campsites, two swimming areas and enough boating, sailing and fishing
for several lifetimes.
El Dorado’s Butler County Community College
is the second-largest of the state’s community-based institutions of learning,
serving more than 8,000 students who attend classes at 26 different learning
centers spread over five counties. Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital delivers
health care in El Dorado and Butler County. With 24-hour emergency care,
maternity services with birthing suites and an intensive-care unit, Susan
B. Allen operates a satellite medical office in Augusta and maintains close
affiliations with senior housing complexes and a local health club. Staff
physicians specialize in family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology,
pediatrics, psychiatry, general and vascular surgery and urology.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000. Wichita Metropolitan
Planning Development, 2000
Harvey County
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Newton, the largest city in Harvey
County, has been named one of America’s best small towns. It’s all
here: beautiful old homes set next to well-designed new residential
additions, a dynamic Main Street with prosperous businesses, a good
school system and a sophisticated medical community. A large factory-outlet
mall stretches along the interstate just south of town. Just
north of Newton, as their name implies, is North Newton, a separately
incorporated village surrounding Bethel College, a church-based liberal-arts
institution whose more than 600 students come from 28 states and 17
foreign countries, representing 37 different religious denominations.
Bethel ranks first among all Kansas colleges in the percentage of
students who go on to earn doctoral degrees. It’s also the only college
in the state named to the John Templeton Foundation’s Honor Roll for
Character-Building Colleges. |
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Amtrak rolls through Newton, as do the Union
Pacific and the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe. Its railroad heritage stretches
back to the last days of the great cattle drives up from Texas. Old buildings
renovated for commercial use punctuate the city’s core. The city’s retail
and industrial enterprises have prospered through the years, but Newton’s
history is the story of its families. Here is small-town living at its best,
with all the economic, cultural and social opportunities of Wichita lying
less than a half an hour away.
The campus of the Newton Medical Center incorporates
eight specialty nursing units, including a special-care nursery whose sophistication
very often makes unnecessary any transfer of at-risk newborns. A fully-staffed
emergency department works around the clock. More than 35 physicians serve
on the active medical staff at Newton Medical Center. Construction has been
completed at the medical center on a $3.5 million cancer facility, offering
both chemotherapy and radiation therapies. The latter therapy involves three-dimensional
treatment planning and intensity modulation capabilities - among the newest
and most sophisticated of cancer therapies.
Community events in Newton celebrate everything that’s best about
hometown America, from the public library’s book sale in April to the
Newton Christmas Parade, from the Sand Creek Folk Life Festival in June
to September’s Fiesta recognizing the contributions of the city’s
Hispanic community. For more information about affordable housing in the
Wichita area,
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