Three projects on Main Street in Little Rock have fallen behind their announced schedules by months and, in one case, even by a couple of years.
But to hear David Robinson, a partner in the projects, tell it, that was the only way to make the long-hoped-for revitalization of the street a reality.
"You've got to be a little crazy to bite off what we bit off," Robinson said. "But you can't fault us for ambition.
"If we had done this one building at a time, we'd be waiting another 25 years for this to happen. Somebody had to take the risk and work on it simultaneously."
Manly Roberts, one of the owners of AMR Construction, which is in charge of all downtown projects for developer Scott Reed and partners, said that the developers have to pay for contingencies, "but you can't buy more time."
"You just discover things [in the old buildings] that had been there for 50 years until you unwrap it," Roberts said. "We're working through it. It's starting to come together. We've just about overcome most of our hurdles, and I think we'll get back on track."
"I've lived here my whole life," Roberts said of downtown. "I'm 57 years old, and I've seen a lot of buildings get torn down. I used to shop for school clothes with my mother at M.M. Cohn. ... We went to lunch at Franke's."
Robinson said he and Reed first approached Jimmy Moses and Rett Tucker, pioneers in downtown redevelopment, about the old Gus Blass Department Store building at 324 Main St. But the men could not work out a plan.
Afterward, Reed and partners announced in September 2010 the first reclamation project on the street, the K Lofts at 315 Main St., across the street in the old Gus Blass warehouse. Reed said the project could be done in "about a year."
A Moses and Tucker project at 322 Main St. in partnership with the Doyle Rogers Co. was announced in March 2012. The Mann on Main includes office space, subsequently taken by state agencies, and retail space, which is still unleased. Its 19 loft apartments were completed in June 2013, as expected from the start.
The K Lofts project encountered a major setback when, in October, a large section of bricks on the alley side of the building fell, crushing the cab of a cement mixer truck, which was empty at the time.
The collapse prompted the developers to totally rebuild the back wall of the five-story building, pushing back the projected completion date from early 2014 to late May and eventually to August of this year. The additional cost for rebuilding the wall was $800,000, Robinson said.
While that effort was underway, Robinson, Reed and other partners bought four buildings in the 500 block of the street and proclaimed the project to be the Main Street Lofts.
It was a bargain at $1.5 million, when the appraised value was $4.3 million, though that figure was contested during a countywide reappraisal in which many properties' values were appealed.
And it turns out the gamble is paying off, Robinson said. The partners sold the biggest and showiest of the four buildings, the 12-story Boyle Building, earlier this year for $4.6 million.
The Little Rock-based Chi Hotel Group plans to convert it into an Aloft hotel, restaurant and coffee shop with an $18 million price tag.
"That was the critical-mass moment that made everything valuable," he said. "Now banks are saying: You're not idiots. We'll loan you money."
The four buildings -- the Arkansas Building (1899), the longtime location for the Pfeifer Brothers Department Store; the M.M. Cohn Building (1941); the Annex Building, also known as the Kahn Building (1954); and the Boyle (1909) -- also have had their share of engineering challenges.
Because the contiguous buildings were built in different eras and with different methods, common solutions were called for. That took a computer-driven design to tie the structures together. In the Arkansas Building, a special material called Fibrwrap, often used in ancient cathedrals, gave the post-and-beam structure the strength it needed without compromising its historical integrity.
Historical integrity is crucial for qualifying for state and federal historical district tax credits, to which Reed has given much credit for making the projects feasible.
The street-level tenants of the mixed-use Main Street Lofts include the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and Ballet Arkansas.
Christina Littlejohn, executive director of the orchestra, said that the delay should not adversely affect it. With the Robinson Center on the verge of a two-year shutdown for an overhaul, the orchestra will be able to rehearse where it performs, at various high schools in central Arkansas.
Robinson said he expects the space for the Rep to be ready in time for its July calendar for educational classes and the ballet's space to be done after the Rep's but before the orchestra's space.
The current effort is not the first run at Main Street revitalization.
In the 1970s, two blocks of Main Street and one block of Capitol Avenue were closed to vehicular traffic and pavers replaced pavement. But Metrocentre Mall failed, as pedestrians never bought into it, and retail stores continued to close. The MainStreet Mall at the corner of Capitol Avenue was named the MainStreet Market when it opened in 1987 as an alternative to freestanding commercial buildings. Today, it houses state agency offices and has only one business, Slick's, a short-order cafe.
Tower Investments of Woodland, Calif., was strongly considering tearing down the four buildings in the 500 block and just selling the land, he said.
"It was going to be like Mr. Stephens' block, all of it torn down, waiting on some project that might or might not happen."
Financier Warren Stephens had buildings he owned on the western side of the 400 block of Main demolished in 2009, including the former Woolworth store, which was the site of a 1960 civil-rights sit-in, and buildings that once housed Montgomery Ward and the Kempner Brothers Shoe Store.
He converted the property into a parking lot, one of several spots under consideration for the Little Rock Technology Park.
Stephens has done his share of preservation: In 2005, he closed his Capital Hotel on Markham Street in downtown and reopened it two years later after pumping a reported $24 million, or more, into it.
One of several partnerships, all of which include Reed, has bought two more historical structures -- the Hall Building (built in 1923) and Davidson Building (1940) -- in the second block of west Capitol Avenue in October, and Reed announced the Capitol Lofts project would be completed in late 2014 or early 2015.
Because of the ripple effects of one project washing over another, the Capitol Lofts will likely be finished by mid-2015, Robinson said recently.