LITTLE ROCK — Park Hill homeowners filled the North Little Rock City Council chambers Monday night and went home winners in a contentious debate over a proposed hillside cut that has taken almost two years to decide.
City aldermen voted 8-0against allowing First Pentecostal Church, 1401 Calvary Road along Interstate 40, to expand its parking lot by going beyond city regulations to cut into a tree-lined hillside that has houses along its top.
The issue has been on the City Council’s agenda since November. The city Planning Commission approved the plan in July 2010, pending the council’s approval for any “major hillside cut.”
Mayor Patrick Hays, who has said he supported the proposal he sponsored, said he had worked to find “a middle ground” between the church and its Park Hill neighbors, but no compromise was ever satisfactory enough to both sides.
“I want to express my personal disappointment and apologize for not finding the right pathway,” Hays said, referring to the inability to reach a compromise. “We as a council, and I as your mayor, did everything we could to find something the neighborhood could live with.”
Alderman Debi Ross, whose Ward 1 includes the area, reminded neighbors just before the vote that the church retains the right for a lesser cut into the hillside under city regulations, without coming back to the council.
A “major hillside cut” is defined by city regulations as “the removal of soil that results in a slope of more than 1-to-4, or a 1-foot rise to 4-foot run.” The church’s proposal required an exception to that regulation and needed council approval.
Nineteen people spoke during a 48-minute public comment session, with 15 being against and four in favor. City fire marshals twice announced that those standing would have to wait in the foyer with the chambers already at its 110-person capacity before the meeting started.
Nathan Holmes, the church’s assistant pastor, told the crowd that the residents and the congregation “share common concerns” and “passionately care about the properties around us.”
Tim Zimmerman, a church member who also lives in Park Hill, said that the property for the parking expansion, still not purchased by the church pending the council’s decision, could be bought and developed by others.
“It will be developed someday by someone for some purpose,” Zimmerman said. “I’d much rather have a parking lot adjacent to a church than anything else.What could be better for the church and for the neighborhood?”
Residents didn’t agree.
“It is not a prime location for commercial development,” said Dooley Road resident Mike Gerfen, noting that Calvary Road doesn’t have a direct access to the church from I-40 and no entrance onto the interstate exists from it. “If it were, it would have been developed by this time.”
Skyline Drive resident Rita Ritchie said the church has previously gotten waivers granted “after the fact” by the city for its steeple height, church school and flashing electronic sign.
“We view this church as a nuisance in our neighborhood because the city has not been good stewards of it,” Ritchie said. “We are already collateral damage of that church.”
Several residents expressed concern that any cut would endanger their homes and property values. A few mentioned damage to house foundations occurring three years ago to several North Cedar Street houses along an unstable bluff above North Park Mall shopping center. That excavation happened in the early 1960s.
“There are too many unanswered questions and too much risk and too much to lose,” said Susan Cooper of Skyline Drive.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/27/2012