Dowell Naylor

Dowell Naylor Jr. was chairman and chief executive director of the Maumelle Land Development Company. He was also executive director of the Little Rock Housing Authority in the early 1960s.

Naylor engaged in numerous revitalization projects in central Arkansas, including the Urban Progress Association's rehabilitation efforts in the central business district of Little Rock, the Livestock Show Area project, the Philander Smith project, the Westrock project, the University Park project, and the Granite Mountain slum clearance project. He was the chief author of the Central Little Rock Urban Renewal Project in 1961. Naylor also worked with the citizen's committee organizing into the Quapaw Quarter Association.

As executive director of the Little Rock Housing Authority Naylor administered public housing projects at Sunset Terrace, Booker Homes, Highland Park, Ives, and Hollinsworth. Naylor served as executive director from 1960 to 1966. In 1966 he moved to Oklahoma City to establish a Urban Action Foundation along the lines of the Little Rock Urban Progress Association.

Within a year Naylor returned to Central Arkansas to work with insurance executive Jess Odom on the New Town development that became Maumelle. Maumelle is sited on nearly six thousand acres of land formerly used as an ammunition dump.

Naylor was born in Waco, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin before becoming the executive director of the Paris Housing Authority in Paris, Texas, and then the director of the Columbia Housing Authority in Columbia, Missouri. His father was Dowell Naylor Sr. who directed the Waco Housing Authority. He was married to Frances Wilcox Naylor. He has three daughters Nanette Foreman, Kathleen Sleeker, and Julie Naylor.

References

• Letha Mills and H. K. Stewart, Greater Little Rock: A Contemporary Portrait (Chatsworth, CA: Windsor Publications, 1990).
• "Obituary," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 24, 2002.