LITTLE ROCK — Taking in the finished Argenta Master Plan for - once again - redeveloping North Little Rock’s historic downtown isn’t something anybody need attempt in one sitting.
Like its vision for becoming some sort of reality, the plan is a little overwhelming. And that’s before adding up the individually listed estimated costs - more than $98 million - if all of it gets done at 2010 prices.
“It really needs to be just one bite at a time,” John Gaudin, the downtown developer behind the planning effort, said of how to implement all of the ideas. “It’s going to take public and private dollars and nonprofit dollars to get it to work. It really is a vision.”
Gaudin’s The Mill LLC partnered on the $85,000 study with the Argenta Community Development Corp. - a nonprofit group that works to revitalize the downtown housing core - and with city government. The three were to evenly split the expense.
The North Little Rock City Council will be asked to formally approve the plan sometime this summer, Gaudin said.
The city, with mixed results, has paid for or produced previous studies - including five in the past nine years - trying to continue redeveloping the once-dormant downtown area.
One study, for instance, helped bring about Dickey-Stephens Park baseball stadium and another contributed to the addition of the 260-unit Enclave at the Riverfront apartments next to Verizon Arena. Some prior ideas are folded into the latest plan.
“We’ve had previous plans with illustrations that were provided and developers have seen a plan and used that to develop portions of it,” said Robert Voyles, North Little Rock’s community planning director. “We very much are hoping that focusing on master planning will spur redevelopment, but there’s no guarantees of that.”
The first “bite” of the plan could be its most important, Voyles and Gaudin said. Creating a “market square” along Main Street would give the city a common public area in the center of downtown.
“Really we’re looking at it probably as being the first piece we implement,” Gaudin said. “Have that be a public square with a wraparound of office and retail and restaurant mix.”
The market square, the area now home to the Certified Arkansas Farmers Market, could have 23 booths on a landscaped plaza, the study said, along with public parking.
“It may just be an activity space for people,” Voyles said.
Other recommendations include redesigns of downtown streets, more walking and bicycle trails, and sprucing up Bishop Lindsey Avenue from Interstate 30 as a “gateway” into downtown, an idea that’s come up before.
The more ambitious recommendations are also among the most expensive: $5.7 million to remove the Maple Street leg of the Main Street Bridge (a similar realignment on Little Rock’s end of the bridge cost $23 million in 1998); $17 million for an Argenta elementary school; and $50 million to create a transit hub that combines Central Arkansas Transit Authority buses, River Rail streetcars, Greyhound bus service and light-rail commuter service where CATA’s offices are now off Ninth and Maple streets.
The transit hub would also mean moving the River Rail trolley maintenance barn and extending track from Main Street and Bishop Lindsey Avenue more than three blocks to the northwest. The existing building, about to complete a $900,000 addition would then become a retail shopping area, according to the study.
Betty Wineland, CATA’s executive director, said that while combining transit services could work, “You need to maintain adequate space to segregate the different operations while continuing to provide for customer convenience and safety.”
Also, Wineland said, the trolley barn was built with federal grants and the Federal Transit Administration would require reimbursement of its share at a depreciated cost of construction. Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County divided the local expense.
Changing the Main Street Bridge alignment and moving the trolley barn into a transit hub are both “really long range” concepts, Gaudin said. But he gave the rationale for doing both.
Removing that leg of the bridge would force traffic to Main Street and through the downtown retail corridor, he said, “instead of accommodating commuters going through the neighborhood on Maple Street, which is primarily residential.”
Relocating the trolley barn, Gaudin explained, would put it at the north end of downtown, instead of being in the center.
All the master plan’s recommendations together, Voyles said, push toward “a livable, walkable downtown” and encourages changes that would “make for a vibrant downtown.”
“With a vision you can work toward a more livable community,” Voyles added. “Some things will be grasped by the development community. Some things may not happen, and in 10 years we’ll do another plan and reconsider what’s possible.”
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 06/20/2010