There's an area of North Little Rock that is seeing quite a bit of development these days.
It's located generally north of the Sylvan Hills area off Arkansas 107 where a Wal-Mart Supercenter is going up. Numerous development signs can be seen in the area. Terry Hartwick, the former North Little Rock mayor who is now president of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, has a residential project on Batesville Pike in the area. He started it in 2003 and the lots are now all sold, he said. There's also a gated community of 300 lots being developed in the area and a shopping center has been built in the area north of the new Village East project.
Village East is a residential subdivision created by former state Sen. Mike Kinard of Magnolia and several partners. A few weeks ago, Kinard and partners cut a ribbon and began selling lots in the project. It's located about a mile north of the intersection of Arkansas 107 and Kellogg Road, which leads to Kellogg Acres, a development created some years ago.
Village East is situated on 24 acres at the intersection of Kellogg and Mine roads and adjoins a 56-acre, multiuse development recently annexed to North LittleRock. Village East is being developed by Village East LLC, the partners being Kinard, Ben L. Eiler of Magnolia, and Dr. David Haas and Dr. Bryan Austin of Maumelle.
Village East actually is part of a larger residential project that will encompass about 200 total acres. The other part of the project will be called Village on the Lake. It includes 157 acres and two lakes. It is being developed by sister partnership Semko LLC, consisting of Kinard, Ben L. Eiler, Ellen Shinn, Randy Oliver and former Magnolia resident Eric Morrison, now of Bartlesville, Okla.
Village East has 74 lots designed for homes with a minimum of 1,800 square feet of heated space.
The entrance to the development is from Kellogg Road,with two stone walls flanking a landscaped boulevard with a guardhouse in the middle.
The project is being developed a bit backward.
Village on the Lake, between Kellogg Road and Batesville Pike to the west, was to be developed first, but it needed access to Kellogg Road, so it was decided to build Village East first to provide that access.
Permits for the two 8-acre lakes have been applied for and "preliminary information indicates positive action on the part of the Corps of Engineers," Kinard said. Plans for the subdivision, which will feature singlefamily homes, have been approved by the North Little Rock Planning Commission, he said.
WARRANTY EXPIRING?
How many times a day do you receive telephone calls about your car warranty running out? Does the caller ask you about a warranty extension, even if your car's original warranty ran out years ago? Are you not real clear just who these callers are?
The Arkansas Automobile Association is receiving a lot of complaints and questions about this practice and is looking into the matter, according to Dennis Jungmeyer, president of the association.
So far, nothing illegal has been found, he said, but the association is trying to find out how these callers obtained the names of car owners.
The callers are not representatives of the car dealers, Jungmeyer said, and the dealers normally do not honor warranty extensions not made by the auto manufacturers.
LISTINGS
A group of developers, Realtors and land owners involved in what is now referred to as "North Little Rock East" is set to go before the next meeting of the Cooperative Arkansas Realtors Multiple Listing Service (CARMLS) for some help with a problem.
This former sparsely populated farming area, where many beautiful new homes are being built, is included in the Realtors' listing designation that includes Rose City, an older, blue-collar neighborhood in North Little Rock that generally has muchlower-priced homes.
This causes all kinds of problems, developers contend, because the spate of new homes going up in "North Little Rock East" are much more expensive.
And there are several thousand homes either going up or on the drawing board, Robert Voyles, director of the North Little Rock Planning Commission, noted during the recent dedication of a new fire station in the area.
The boundaries sought for the listing designation would be from Interstate 40 south to the Arkansas River and from Interstate 440 east to the Lonoke County line, which includes the Baucum and Stone Links communities and several new subdivisions, including a large multiuse development being planned at Baucum. The boundaries would be flexible, said one developer, so that other subdivisions coming in could be brought under the umbrella.
The name suggested for the designation is Faulkner Lakes, because a lake by that name dominates the area, which is full of smaller lakes.
Multiple listing services are what home buyers and real estate people use to compare the values of homes. At one time, there had been some problems in obtaining financing for the more expensive newer homes in North Little Rock East because the listings compared their values against much less expensive Rose City area homes.
Growth in North Little Rock, along with new industry at the Arkansas River Port Authority at the southern end of the I-440 bridge, has surged and created a need for more housing.
Everybody's Business runs every Sunday in the business section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Send your business news to Leroy Donald, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 2221, Little Rock, Ark. 72203; or e-mail leroylero@aol.com
Business, Pages 83 on 05/18/2008