LITTLE ROCK — There is new life coming to the once derelict building at 315 Main St. in downtown Little Rock.
Construction crews are tearing down and rebuilding the interior of the 1902 building, originally a warehouse for the Gus Blass department store that used to be across the street.
Soon, the first floor and basement will house Porter’s Jazz Cafe, a jazz club/bar/restaurant that takes its name from Little Rock jazz legends Art Porter Sr. and Jr., as well as 30 loft apartments that will be known as K Lofts.
Developer Scott Reed, formerly of Portland, Ore., bought the building earlier this year from a company owned by the family of Little Rock City Director Dean Kumpuris with help from Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola.
Vanessa Norton McKuin was one of the catalysts.
McKuin is the executive director of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, a statewide voice for preservation in the state since 1981, and which has as its mission preserving Arkansas’ architectural and cultural resources while educating, advocating and assisting preservation efforts across the state.
“We helped with a preservation-minded owner,” McKuin says. “We brokered the deal and facilitated the transfer.”
McKuin saw the particular importance of helping preserve part of a block that in June was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and an area where preservation has so far taken a back seat to destruction.
“We saw the loss of [historic] buildings on the 400 block of Main Street and hoped we could prevent more of that happening,”she explains.
McKuin praises Reed as being “creative about the way he does development,” and foresees the 315 Main project as a way to attract more investment to the area.
McKuin can also take partial credit for the state and federal tax credits that are helping Reed rehabilitate the historic property.
The alliance, under McKuin’s watch, was the lead advocate for the 2009 law that created the Arkansas Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit, which provides, through leveraging private investment for preservation, a 25 percent credit.
Among the other achievements the alliance counts as it approaches its 30th anniversary: leading the effort for the passage of the state’s Real Estate Transfer Tax, which created a funding source for statewide preservation programs.
The kickoff for the alliance’s 30th anniversary is part of the celebration for the 2010 Arkansas Preservation Awards, 6 p.m. Jan. 14 at Chenal Country Club, 10 Chenal Club Blvd., Little Rock.
Theodosia Murphy Nolan of El Dorado will receive the alliance’s Parker Westbrook Award for lifetime achievement in historic preservation.
The alliance will also hand out awards for Outstanding Service in Neighborhood Preservation, Outstanding Work by a Craftsperson, Excellence in Preservation through Rehabilitation, Excellence in Preservation through Restoration, Excellence in Personal Projects, Excellence in Heritage Preservation, Outstanding Achievement in Preservation Advocacy, Outstanding New Construction in an Historic Setting, Outstanding Preservation Reporting in the Media, the NedShank Award for Outstanding Preservation Publication and Outstanding Achievement in Preservation Education.
Tickets are $150. Patron tickets and tables are available. Call (501) 821-1021 or visit the website, preservear kansas. org.
McKuin, an Arkansas native, comes from a family with ties in south Arkansas and the Ozarks and a history of preservation.
Her parents operate Norton Arts, an arts conservation firm on South Main Street in Little Rock, a neighborhood that is undergoing a renaissance of its own.
McKuin’s first foray into historic preservation came when her family acquired and restored her great-greatgrandparents’ May Farmstead in Newton County, including a log house built in 1880 with a frame addition, circa 1910.
“They were instilling the preservation instinct into meearly on,” she says.
The homestead is “integrally woven into local history,” she explains, noting that her great-great-grandmother was a midwife and that the entire community was dependent on the May family in one way oranother.
McKuin went to high school in Marshall and earned her bachelor’s degree in art from Hendrix College in Conway. She was an assistant registrar at Little Rock’s Old State House Museum before heading to New York to take a master of science degree in historic preservation from Pratt Institute. Before joining the alliance in 2008, she managed programs and operations at the New York Preservation Archive Project.
She and her husband, Tim, are rehabilitating a house, circa 1902, that combines Colonial Revival and Queen Anne styles, “with a big porch and big columns,” two blocks from Central High School Historic District in Little Rock.
“When we got it, it was boarded up and in rough shape,” she says. “It’s still in rough shape, but we’re slowly figuring out what needs to be done.”
High Profile, Pages 39 on 12/19/2010