THAT’S BUSINESS

Main to get another big mixed-use project

Doug Meyer, managing member of Crystal LLC, says he is on the verge of announcing a major project for the Fulk Building on Main at Third in Little Rock.

It will be the fifth mixed use project either completed or under construction on Main or just off the street.

Meyer said that means Bennett’s Military Supplies, which has been at 302 Main since 1972, will be moved. He and his wife, Sheree, whose family has owned Bennett’s Military Supplies and its predecessors since 1870, are actively looking for another location downtown.

Doug Meyer says it won’t be across the street where Mr. Cool, which will go out of business by the end of March, is located.

(Meyer, by the way, disagreed with the way an earlier column characterized the action of Crystal LLC, which owns the Mr. Cool property. Initially given a 60-day notice to vacate, Tom and Susie Choi, owners of Mr. Cool, were granted another 30 days and in the recent past had even gotten a reduction in rent as their business had been hurt by construction on Main. Efforts to reach Meyer for the previous column were unsuccessful.)

Meyer declined to discuss the redevelopment plans for the Fulk Building, but a sign on the door of Bennett’s said the 19th-century three-story red brick building is suitable for apartments and office and retail space.

Sheree Meyer’s great grandfather, Max Bennett, and his brother, Ike Bennett, started a dry goods store in North Little Rock, then moved it to Center Street in Little Rock.

She started working in the store at age 12, selling magic tricks. Her father, Joseph Kaufman, left Bennett’s to his three children. Her son, Adam Davenport, is co-manager of Bennett’s and the fifth generation in the family business.

It speaks well for the renaissance of Main Street that it’s already attracting businesses, even while the rebirth arguably is only in its first trimester.

Orbea USA will have a soft opening of its new retail showroom and coffee shop at 119 Main on Feb. 26 in a lead-up to the grand opening, which will coincide with the Little Rock Marathon on March 2.

Orbea will have riders who will serve as pace cyclists for the leaders in the race, said Tony Karklins, North America director of sales and marketing for the maker of the high-end bicycles.

Karklins would dearly love to have a breakaway from what he said has been a terrible winter, post-Christmas, for bicycle sales, a malady that has affected many facets of retailing.

“We’ve probably had the most miserable winter of business ever. The majority of the United States has just had this horrible winter. The Carolinas and Atlanta are major cycling markets.”

Orbea moved from North Little Rock last fall so that it could open its first showroom in the country. That enabled the manufacturer to change its business model.

It is the hub of operations where all salesmen around the country come to the center, like spokes, rather than the other way around, Karklins has said.

Speaking of spokes, the bicycle shop of that name at 1001 Kavanaugh Blvd. will manage the Orbea shop at 119 Main, said Spokes owner Matt Seelinger.

“It’s going to be kind of a factory store,” Seelinger said.

The Spokes shop on Kavanaugh will continue to sell various brands of bikes and accoutrements, he said.

Pregnancy, to extend the metaphor, is not the “sexiest” time, so a storage facility might not normally stir much interest.

But Doug Meyer is stoked.

He and a business partner bought the vacant building at 823 Main St., where Peerless Engraving had been located.

Downtown Storage will open about April 1, Meyer said.

“With all the new apartments coming online, people moving from homes to apartments are going to need a place to store their bikes or Christmas trees or whatever.” The rental areas will be climate-controlled, he said.

Meyer thinks that residents in the hundreds of apartments that will be completed this year and the next in downtown Little Rock will rent about half of the space, with the other half being commercial renters.

Meyer and his partner in Terraforma LLC bought 28,000-square-foot building for $365,000 from Sam Bracy III in February 2013, according to county land records.

Bracy, who passed away in November, had been owner of Peerless, which was founded in 1921 and was bought by Magna IV in 2007. If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or email him at

jweatherly@arkansasonline.com

Business, Pages 67 on 02/16/2014

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