Drug-abuse center turns dirt on LR’s 12th Street

LITTLE ROCK — A substance-abuse program that got its start in a tiny home several decades ago broke ground Friday on a $6 million building that is being heralded as a potential jump-start in revitalizing Little Rock’s 12th Street corridor.

With state and city officials on hand Friday, representatives of Better Community Development turned dirt on the 3600 block of 12th Street where a 25,000-square-foot building should be completed by fall 2012.

“The facility we’re in now is a church fellowship hall. It wasn’t set up to serve people with substance problems,” said Darryl Swinton, the nonprofit’s director of housing and economic development.

The Empowerment Center, which received $1 million in federal stimulus funds as well as $2.5 million in federal housing loans for construction, is being built three blocks east of the nonprofit’s current rehabilitation program at Hoover United Methodist Church. Better Community Development, previously Black Community Developers, is an offshoot of the church’s social outreach mission.

The church’s former senior pastor, C.J. Duvall, who recently left the pulpit, donated some of the seed money for the new center that will house 24 treatment beds. An additional 30 single-occupant units also will be built using part of Little Rock’s $8.6 million stimulus grant received last year to redevelop and build residential units in an older part of the capital city.

Better Community Development is one of the city’s three partners in the undertaking to renovate or build 100 new units by 2014.

While that federal grant takes care of brick-and-mortar improvements in the neighborhood, City Director Ken Richardson’s said the Empowerment Center will work on “redeveloping the human capital.”

“I want us to have revitalized people to walk on those sidewalks and drive on those streets,” Richardson said at the groundbreaking.

The Empowerment Center is an anchor in Richardson’s 12th Street corridor plan that, with the help of a consultant, took residents’ input and created a look and development pattern they’d like to see on the busy east-west corridor. The plan includes a tree-lined median, bike paths and development suggestions for properties fronting 12th Street.

Moving into a bigger space designed specifically for treatment programs will consolidate Better Community Development’s program into one space and make it easier to offer programs that qualify for Medicare and other health-insurance-provider coverage, Swinton said.

The Empowerment Center is the first of several planned projects to break ground.

The Central Arkansas Library System also plans to build a $10 million children’s library near War Memorial Park’s southern entrance off 12th Street.

Little Rock’s proposed sales-tax increase that has yet to be referred to the voters would raise $10 million to build a two-story police station at 12th and Pine streets. The station would become home to the department’s detectives and a number of patrol officers, and city officials hope to attract a bank or other neighborhood-type business to the building.

While everyone offered their accolades to the Empowerment Center at Friday’s groundbreaking, the building pitted longtime residents against the nonprofit when it went to the planning commission for approval in 2009.

Some residents were concerned about living next to a substance-abuse treatment center while others were reluctant to sell their property and move into new housing offered by the then-Black Community Developers.

Planning commissioners, however, signed off on the project and the nonprofit relocated several residents on the block. One house remains to be razed in coming months.

“I even thank those who are haters because they made us stronger,” said the Rev. William Robinson, the nonprofit’s director, commenting on the initial struggle the nonprofit had convincing everyone of the center’s development. “We’re on our way to rebuilding lives in this community.”

Swinton said construction should start Sept. 1 and building is expected to take 12 months. The nonprofit, which has raised $4.8 million of the $6 million price tag from government sources and private donations, continues its fundraising efforts for the building as well as a second $1.8 million phase that would house administrative offices.