LITTLE ROCK — Tree lit at library site as work starts
While dirt work has been ongoing for months at the site of the future Children’s Library, Central Arkansas Library System employees and city officials held a “groundbreaking” Wednesday for the new library off Jonesboro Drive.
Instead of the traditional act of putting a shovel in dirt, library officials lit up a tree that will shine over the construction site until the library is completed in 2013. More than 100 people were on hand for the celebration.
The 30,000-square-foot library is a first of its kind in the state: a building completely dedicated to young patrons.The $12 million library will include a computer lab, teaching kitchen, a theater, study rooms and community rooms that can be used after hours.
A greenhouse and teaching garden also will be on the property that shares some of Little Rock’s War Memorial Park on the south side of Interstate 630.
Library officials hope the new children’s library will be completed by January 2013 and opened by June 2013. Little Rock voters in 2007 approved a property-tax increase to payfor the library and other projects in the capital city.
4 mobile homes on condemnation list
City directors routinely condemn dilapidated houses, but a vote Tuesday is something new - they’re being asked to condemn mobile homes.
In April 2010, Little Rock adopted rules on mobile homes and manufactured homes that barred mobile homes built before 1976 within the city and required owners to register their properties as part of a new inspection program.
On Tuesday, city directors will be asked to vote to condemn and demolish three mobile homes at 9413 Dartmoore Drive, Lots 1, 2 and 4, and another at 33 Don Drive.
One of the mobile homes has fire damage, while another had a tree fall on it. All four have been declared unsafe and are vacant. In recent months, some of the metal siding on a few homes has been stripped.
Under city code, mobile homes that have been declared unsafe are not allowed to be rehabilitated.
Demolishing and removing the four mobile homes will cost the city an estimated $14,000.
City bids to pick
up county trash
Little Rock is looking to expand its trash pickup across the Arkansas River.
The city submitted a bid with Pulaski County’s Regional Recycling and Waste Reduction District to pick up garbage in North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle. The city was the lowest bidder at $13 per ton or $6 per cubic yard, but the contract award doesn’t automatically go to the lowest bidder, said John Roberts, the district’s executive director.
Other bids came from Waste Management, $21.98 per ton or $7.85 per cubic yard, and Allied Waste, whose bid was $26 per ton.
Engineers are reviewing the three bids submitted last week for other specifications that the solid-waste district wants in anew trash-pickup provider.
Roberts said he was excited to see Little Rock make a bid.
“We did this five, six, seven years ago and we only had two bidders. Waste Management and BFI on Mabelvale Pike,” he said. “I kept saying ‘Boy we’ve got to figure out to get some other people involved in this because one of these days one of these landfills are going to close.’ ”
Meanwhile, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola has been looking for ways to increase usage at the city’s landfill. He had a consultant review the landfill last year to see whether it would make better fiscal sense to lease out the landfill or to continue running it. Consultants stopped short of a recommendation, but said a city-owned landfill is a valuable asset.
Roberts did not have a specific date for when the bid will be awarded.
Arkansas, Pages 18 on 11/12/2011