Developer Tommy Hodges is lighting up The Grove -- a hotel and entertainment district that is the latest component of the 178-acre Gateway Town Center at Interstates 30 and 430. He's dressing up 500 lacebark elm trees with 1,000 lights each.
Hodges is hoping the added bling will make The Grove like the tree-lit Highland Park Village in Dallas. Crews are working on about 75 of the trees planted near signs that are visible from the recently opened highway interchange. The rest will be planted, and wrapped and draped in lights along walkways and streets in The Grove, adjacent to Outlets at Little Rock, which is still under construction.
The trees were grown in Tennessee and are slow-growing, which means the LED lights on them will have to be replaced only every 10 or so years, said designer Joe Barnett of Little Rock Land Design.
"The bark has a really interesting texture, and the leaves are really small when they come out," said Barnett. He's done landscaping on the Gateway Town Center since its inception.
Hodges has 220,000 lights in a warehouse at the back of his office. He ordered strings of lights made specifically for wrapping the trunks and other lights that connect at the top of the trunks and can be spread upward through the branches.
"It'll grab your eye when you're driving down the freeway," Hodges said. "It's all about getting people out here after dark and making it a 24-hour experience."
Installing the display was to coincide with the opening of the interchange, but the trees and lights won't all be up until next month at the earliest because Hodges was delayed in getting electricity to where the trees will stand.
Gateway's Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, Love's Travel Center and a branch of Searcy-based First Security Bank are on track to exceed 1 million visitors this year, Hodges said. Outlets at Little Rock will be the city's first and only outlet complex.
The I-30/430 interchange is used by more than 100,000 travelers each day and is within a 90-minute drive of about 1.1 million residents. Hodges hopes those people will shop until they drop and that they will drop into a bed at one of at least two hotels planned for The Grove. That area of Gateway also is being pitched for nightlife, such as restaurants and other kinds of entertainment.
"We're taking the tack that this is a unique destination unlike really any other in the state," Hodges said.
Michael Barelli, vice president of Massachusetts-based New England Development -- who is putting in Outlets at Little Rock -- said foundations and slabs for all 325,000 square feet of store space have been poured, and about half of the retail outlet's steel framework and roofing has gone up. The complex will accommodate 75 stores.
Barelli would not disclose the names of any stores, saying it will be up to the individual retailers to release the news when they're ready. Hodges' lips were sealed, as well.
"No one outside of the developer and us really know who these tenants are," he said. "But I can tell you that they're the typical tenants if you've been to Branson or a new outlet mall that's well-done."
The center is planned to open next summer.
"Early in '15, we'll start fitting out tenants' internal spaces," Barelli said.
Also planned for the development are: a new office for Hodges' company near an existing pond behind Bass Pro; a second pond for storm-water runoff from the outlet mall; and more office and commercial development at the back of the property.
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