A long-debated realignment of a second entrance and exit for NorthShore Business Park in North Little Rock won approval from the North Little Rock City Council in a special meeting on the topic Monday evening.
The change means the city's Master Street Plan will now show a proposed NorthShore Lane extending off Crystal Hill Road into the business park, then turning south toward Young Road through a planned apartment complex proposed by Lindsey Management Co. of Fayetteville.
The original alignment would have taken the road east around a mountain to connect with an existing NorthShore Lane on the back side of the business park, which is near the Interstate 430 interchange with Crystal Hill Road and Maumelle Boulevard.
Aldermen voted 6-2 to alter the Master Street Plan. Aldermen Linda Robinson and Bruce Foutch voted to keep the alignment as approved by the City Council in January 2014.
The City Council also approved, 7-1, with Foutch voting no, to rezone from commercial to multifamily use a 5-acre parcel that is adjacent to the new proposed road. The rezoning will accommodate a property addition by Lindsey Management for the planned 414-unit apartment complex.
Lindsey is under contract to purchase 18.85 acres of city-owned property on the north side of Young Road for $754,000 to build the bulk of the apartment complex, with closing on that purchase due June 8.
NorthShore Business Park developer Gene Pfeifer and others spoke against the proposed road alignment change. Mayor Joe Smith said that a decision was needed to close on the contract so Lindsey can move forward with its project. Discussions with all parties will continue on the road alignment and the council can "come back and tweak it" if needed, Smith said.
"We need a second access there," Smith said. "The new Master Street Plan will have a second access."
Pfeifer said the current Master Street Plan is the better choice to align the road with a second access point for the business park, which also contains Crystal Hill Elementary School. The only entrance-exit now is at NorthShore Drive and Crystal Hill Road.
"Every day, for traffic going in and out, that intersection is stretched beyond capacity," Pfeifer told the council. Changing the road alignment will mean traffic backups "will only get worse," he added.
Hugh Jarrett of Lindsey Management told the council that the company needed "some kind of certainty" about the road alignment to go forward with the apartment project and that it would work with whatever the city decided.
Ernie Peters of Peters and Associates engineering firm told aldermen that a traffic study his company did for Pfeifer showed that the realignment would mean "considerably more delay at the Crystal Hill and NorthShore Drive intersection" because of the ease for apartment residents to go in that direction rather than to the second entrance-exit.
"The existing alignment would also serve, to a greater extent, the future and existing businesses of the business park," Peters said. "It would better serve the area if the road is built as planned."
Alderman Maurice Taylor asked if both alignments could be built at some point because the apartment complex residents and any increased development of the business park will continue to add traffic in the future.
"The volume of traffic is going to get to a point where we need both," Taylor said. "Why not figure a way to do both?"
Chris Wilbourn, the city's traffic service director, said he disagreed with the volume of traffic projected in the Peters' traffic study if the new alignment is built. He also said that the study used numbers based on "a full build-out" of the apartments and that a traffic signal wouldn't be needed at the new intersection, on the basis of traffic volume during the project's earliest stages.
Metro on 04/21/2015