Wednesday's editorial, "Visionaries at work again," quoted me as saying that "the Highway Department is concerned about moving traffic, and it's not really their job to be concerned about how that affects all of downtown Little Rock."
The conversation from which this quote was taken was about my frustration at the failure of the Little Rock and North Little Rock communities to be in leadership roles working with the Highway Department to find the best solutions to the difficult task of improving the Interstate 30 Corridor. We are reacting to design proposals from the Highway Department rather than being proactive in creating better solutions.
As CEO of Cromwell Architects Engineers, I am very proud of my company's recent purchase of the old Sterling Paint Building at Sixth Street and Shall Avenue, where we plan to relocate east of I-30 near Heifer International. Our vision is to revitalize this historic warehouse and industrial area with mixed-use development having good pedestrian connectivity to downtown and the River Market.
It is unthinkable that we are currently on a path of building a barrier between the east and west sides of I-30 that will be twice the width of the current highway, blocking daylight and creating a no-man's zone for hundreds of feet underneath. The current design accommodates and encourages traffic flying through downtown at high speeds heading for other destinations. We should be removing this traffic from the I-30 corridor, not encouraging it.
Why not a solution that replaces the current I-30 from I-40 to the I-630 interchange with a beautiful, tree-lined boulevard at the same grades as the city streets, with no ramps, no flyovers and no elevated roadway? Let's use Park Avenue in New York, the Unter den Linden in Berlin, and the Champs-Elysees in Paris as our inspiration.
High-speed traffic does not belong in our downtown. Accommodating a quick getaway to the suburbs does nothing for our community.
Other communities have used federal highway dollars to build public transit and bike paths. Everywhere this has occurred, property values along these routes has increased dramatically.
Yet we continue to build high-speed highways that encourage urban sprawl, and relegate commuters to spending hours of their weekly lives burning fossil fuels going back and forth.
I am still very hopeful that it is not too late, and that our leaders will rise to the occasion and make really smart decisions about the future livability of this community.
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Charley Penix is chief executive officer of Cromwell Architects Engineers in Little Rock.
Editorial on 11/02/2015