LITTLE ROCK — As Main Street boosters work to convince Pulaski Technical College trustees to move the school’s culinary program to the downtown Little Rock corridor, other property on the street is being eyed for redevelopment.
Jimmy Moses of the Moses Tucker real estate company told college trustees on Friday that he and others are working on plans for a $20 million redevelopment of the former Gus Blass Department Store building at Fourth and Main streets, two blocks north of the land that downtown boosters have suggested the college locate to. The stretch of office and retail stores has been vacant for years and is currently for lease by Doyle Rogers Co.
“It will be a combination of significant office space. We already have a tenant committed to the office space,” he told trustees Friday during a presentation on why the school should build its new Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Center on Main Street rather than on campus property off Interstate 30. “We will build a series of 12 specialty retail shops and restaurant spaces on Main Street. We are building 44 residential rental housing units and a new 250-space parking garage to serve not only our project but for downtown Little Rock.”
Contacted Monday, Moses said he wasn’t able to delve into details about the project, which hinges on financing.
“We’re working on a redevelopment effort there but it’s not definitive yet, not for certain at all, until we know more about our financing,” Moses said.
Moses Tucker is behind dozens of new condo units in the River Market District east of Main Street, as well as new commercial space. Moses and other downtown boosters have hoped that the revitalization efforts in the entertainment district would eventually make its way to Main Street’s empty storefronts and vacant lots.
A new restaurant and jazz club, Porter’s Jazz Cafe, recently opened in a long-shuttered building just across the street from the former Blass department store building. The building, now known as the K Lofts, was once a warehouse for the department store.
Along with the cafe, 30 apartments are planned for the building. Scott Reed, the owner and developer of K Lofts project, said Monday that his crews are currently working on the building’s exterior and back two units but he didn’t have a completion date he wanted to announce for the $3 million project.
Reed and Moses say the market will support more apartments and office space in downtown Little Rock.
“People want to live downtown. By our math, Little Rock has less than 2 percent rental downtown compared to work force. A normal city in South has two to three times that much,” said Reed, who relocated from Oregon several years ago to develop properties in Little Rock.
“We’re just hopeful that Main Street is about ready to blossom and that gives us great interest and hope in the street,” Moses said. “I think good things are going to happen there in the next year or two but I can’t get into any specifics in what we’re looking at at this point.”
Information for this report was provided by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/22/2011