Collective has plans to energize street life in Financial Quarter

John Martin (left) and Glen Woodruff would like to see plaza areas like this one outside of the Regions Tower in downtown Little Rock redesigned to draw people out of their offices.
John Martin (left) and Glen Woodruff would like to see plaza areas like this one outside of the Regions Tower in downtown Little Rock redesigned to draw people out of their offices.

A group of downtown Little Rock real estate property managers, investors and other stakeholders have sought help from a volunteer group of local engineers and architects to help rebrand the financial heart of the city — a tight area bordered by Broadway and Sixth, Markham and Main streets.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of the Little Rock financial district.

The designated area, dubbed the Financial Quarter, abuts the Creative Corridor along Main Street and is meant to mirror the atmosphere of the River Market District.

Financial Quarter stakeholders have been meeting with studioMAIN for more than a year to brainstorm ideas for making the city’s financial core more attractive and more of a destination. StudioMAIN, a collective of professionals from across the design field, is slated to unveil its strategy Aug. 18.

The intent is to enhance the area’s increasingly vacant bank lobbies, streetscape and open plazas to draw more people out of their offices and encourage participation at nighttime and on weekends.

“We’ve realized that the core of the population of the daytime downtown workforce is right here in the quarter,” said Glen Woodruff, director of business development for Wittenberg Delony & Davidson Architects and the studioMAIN coordinator for the project.

“We’re all held up in our high-rises, and we need to bring people down and engage them in the activity at street-level, so that the street is as dynamic here as it is in the River Market.”

Moses Tucker Real Estate Inc., the firm largely responsible for bringing the River Market to fruition, was the catalyst for the potential improvements to the Financial Quarter. Woodruff said the process has been the same as that followed for development of the River Market.

“The advantage that the Financial Quarter has over the startup of the River Market is that we already have the people here,” Woodruff continued. “We’ve got this daytime population down there that we’ve got to bring back into the street.”

Moses Tucker manages and leases the 30-story Regions Center for the bank building’s owners. The Simmons Tower is 40 floors and Union Plaza has 21.

“We knew that this needed to happen with Main Street beginning to have new life and energy,” Jimmy Moses said. “The core area — the old historic high-rise financial district of downtown — needed a shot in the arm, as well.”

Moses Tucker doesn’t own any property in the Financial Quarter but considers it “the next logical place to focus our energy to continue the downtown redevelopment effort.”

The high-rise bank buildings were built some 25-45 years ago, when developers/owners didn’t pay much attention to how the towers interacted with the street. The Regions Center is a good example, Moses said.

“It doesn’t really front Capitol Avenue. It almost turns its back on it,” he said. Moses Tucker is looking at ways to make the building work with its environment, much like the way buildings in the River Market co-exist.

The traditional bank lobby isn’t what it used to be. The advent of online banking has negated the need for people to actually visit a bank, so lobbies are largely void of customers. Lobbies aren’t as vibrant as they were even 10 years ago, Moses said.

“We still want and need the financial institutions present there. We don’t want them to leave,” he added. “But there’s so much more that could be done to make the lobbies more lively and more open to the street.”

Those ground-level and accessible spaces are ideal for retail and restaurants, Moses said.

“Whether it’s women out shopping at lunch or a group going to dinner or drinks, if you’ve got a significant amount of retail and food and beverage operations on the ground floor, the neighborhood just has an exciting feel to it.”

Heather Davis and Joe Stanley of Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, Chris East of Cromwell Architects Engineers and Jennifer Herron of Herron Horton Architects are vetting ideas for creating a more aesthetically pleasing streetscape. Jonathan Opitz of AMR Architects is gathering examples of how plazas and other open spaces can be improved.

Chad Young and Caleb Tyson of Wittenberg Delony & Davidson Architects are working on ways to make bank tower lobbies more attractive to businesses, and James Meyer of WER Architects/Planners has taken on the duty of master planning and infill. All work for studioMAIN is done on a volunteer basis.

Costs of improvements and amenities would be shouldered mostly by the individual property owners in the quarter. The city can make changes in the public rights of way.

When the Financial Quarter stakeholders and studioMAIN meet next, the committee heads are expected to provide images that depict real physical changes to the area.

John Martin, also of Moses Tucker and co-chairman of the Financial Quarter group, said some immediate modifications include signs that brand the area and point visitors to the landmarks they need to know.

StudioMAIN has proposed using brightly colored paint in the crosswalks within the district, as well as artistic canopies over parts of the sunlit streetscape. There’s also talk about moving the city’s Food Truck Festival from the SoMA (South Main Street) area to the financial quarter in 2016.

Eye-catching bus-stop shelters, bench seating, trash receptacles and movable pop-up retail kiosks also have been proposed.

Martin said conversation about branding the quarter began when some companies within the district made noise about leaving downtown for more livable areas. He used Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield as an example but said there are more.

Earlier this year, Blue Cross announced it was consolidating several of its downtown offices into space at an office tower in Riverdale, but said the location was not the issue.

“We have such a huge base of industry in the downtown financial quarter,” Martin said. “There should be no reason why people should be looking at moving out, or moving away or closing shop. We need to give them reason to stay and get excited about being where they are.”

One way to get people to stay downtown is to entice them to live there, Woodruff said

“A crazy, ‘what if’ idea is what if these high rises actually had condos in them instead of just offices,’ Woodruff said. “In my mind, that’s not a bad idea.”

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, a member of the Financial Quarter group, said residential living is a key element.

“Those bank buildings dump out at 5 o’clock,” Stodola said. There could be as many as 256 apartments or lofts on Main Street by the end of the year or early next year, he added.

“That’s the kind of thing that creates the environment where people want to be,” the mayor said.

It’s evidence that the work/live/play concept is spreading.

Said Moses: “At some point, a few years down the road, all of these neighborhoods and districts will blur as we reinvent the downtown area and make it one exciting and interesting place.”

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