LITTLE ROCK — Former President Bill Clinton pledged Wednesday that his foundation will start work on the Rock Island Bridge in 2010 even though it has yet to raise the full $10.5 million needed to convert it into a pedestrian/ bicycle bridge.
Clinton made the promise during a luncheon on the front lawn of his presidential center where 1,000 people gathered to celebrate the center’s five-year anniversary.
The announcement came eight years after Clinton spoke to another large crowd on the same grounds about plans for the center, which included renovating the former railroad bridge into a landmark walkway over the Arkansas River.
“This will have a visualimpact on people who see the bridge,” Clinton said Wednesday, repeating once more that the bridge will make Little Rock “uniquely identifiable.”
Once complete, the Rock Island Bridge project would serve as another connector in the 14-mile Arkansas River Trail loop.
The conversion project originally was expected to cost $5 million, but estimates later skyrocketed to as high as $13 million, leaving the foundation to raise the additional money. The most recent estimates have ranged from $10.3 million to $10.5 million, said Clinton Foundation spokesman Jordan Johnson.
Residents have grown frustrated in recent years over the delay in starting work on the bridge, which is owned by Little Rock.
In September 2008, the city sent the Clinton Foundation a proposal stipulating that the foundation would pick up any costs above the city’s $1 million share. It also required the foundation to provide a project timeline by April 1. The proposal was never signed, and Johnson said Wednesday that he did not know when it would be in light of Clinton’s announcement.
Wednesday’s bridge announcement was one of two Clinton made about his center’s future during a 30-minute speech. The other was that he wanted people to send in suggestions on how the center can improve itself, including its relationship with the public.
Clinton said he hoped that the center and the nearby Clinton School of Public Service could become places where serious discussion can take place on the nation’s pressing issues of sustainable energy, health care and immigration.
Clinton said he wants visitors to leave the center with an understanding about how political decisions affect their lives.
“I wanted them to believe that decisions have consequences in real people’s lives,and therefore we should all care about the political system,” he said.
“It matters who does what,” he said. “Cynicism is not an option.”
Clinton said one of the greatest challenges now facing Americans is what seems like an ongoing battle against change, whether it involves health care, the environmentor education.
“As citizens, we need to be in the change business when our institutions no longer further the purpose” they were started for, he said, adding that he wants his center’s legacy to be that Americans can “always be forever young” as long as they’re not afraid to change with the times.
For Little Rock, Clinton’s center has created its own legacy of change. The city’s skyline has grown taller with new hotels and condominium projects since Clinton announced the center’s riverfront location in 1997.
Little Rock’s Regional Chamber of Commerce estimates that more than $1.6 billion has been invested downtown in new construction and renovations since 1997.
Before introducing Clinton to the crowd Wednesday, Little Rock City Director Dean Kumpuris recounted all the changes in the River Market since the announcement on building the Clinton center in a then-scraggly warehouse district.
Without the Clinton center, Little Rock wouldn’t have newly renovated hotels, anArkansas Game and Fish Commission nature center, a new children’s playground, sculpture garden or Heifer International education center, Kumpuris said.
In his talk Wednesday, Clinton said renovating the Rock Island Bridge will create another popular tourism attraction.
Clinton’s foundation has raised $7.5 million toward the bridge project - $4 million from the foundation itself, $1 million from Little Rock and $2.5 million in federal stimulus money from the state.
On Tuesday, the Little Rock Advertising and Promotion Commission set aside $30,000to help with the project.
Johnson said money is needed to show a potential grant giver that the foundation would have enough money in hand to start the project.
While Johnson said there was a $30,000 gap in fundraising, he would not say to whom the foundation had applied for grant cash or how much the potential grant would add. He said the foundation hopes to make an announcement soon about further funding.
It’s possible that the foundation won’t need the commission money. But if it does, the foundation will have to fill out a form detailing what the money would be spent on and how the request meets legal requirements for spending tax dollars. The commission’s 2 percent tax collections on hotel rooms and prepared food can be spent to advertise and promote the city, on bond payments or on convention centers and facilities supportingconvention centers.
John Baker, the commission’s attorney, said the $30,000 funding request would be studied in detail once submitted.
Hearing about Clinton’s pledge Wednesday, resident Gene Pfeifer said he was happy to hear a commitment toward starting the project.
“I wish we had a definite date, but let’s not look back. Let’s look forward. Now we need to focus our attention on the other gaps in the trail,” he said.
Pfeifer, a longtime critic of delays in the bridge work, started a “Build Our Bridge” Web site, and along with numerous other residents, attended Little Rock Board of Directors meetings to demandthat the city put pressure on the foundation to start the project.
Pfeifer at one time owned the land on which the presidential center sits. He was forced to sell the property to the city, which used its power of eminent domain to acquire it. Pfeifer has said that his continued advocacy for the bridge’s completion is because he wants to fill in a gap in the popular River Trail, which runs on both sides of the Arkansas River. The trail still lacks a safe connection on the Little Rock side near Cantrell Road and Riverfront Drive.
The Rock Island Bridge would be the third pedestrian and bicycle crossing over the Arkansas River to be created in recent years.
Since the 2001 Rock Island Bridge announcement, Pulaski County started and completed the $12.5 million Big Dam Bridge, a popular pedestrian span that crosses the Arkansas River about seven miles upstream from the presidential center. That bridge opened Sept. 30, 2006.
The county also planned and finished a $5.8 million renovation of the downtown Junction Bridge, which opened for public use May 17, 2008.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/19/2009