Fourth-generation Baring Cross resident Harlan Hunter said that when he got married two years ago, persuading his wife to move from Sherwood into his North Little Rock neighborhood was something of a challenge.
"I had to sell my wife on Baring Cross," Hunter, now president of the Baring Cross Neighborhood Association, told a group that was meeting Thursday to discuss plans to revitalize the neighborhood. "She said, 'why would I want to move to Baring Cross?' I said that I'm really looking forward to the future there."
"Would you want to move to Baring Cross?" Hunter asked the assembled group about how outsiders perceive their neighborhood and what sort of changes can overcome that negativity. "That's something you have to ask yourself."
Baring Cross, a neighborhood on the west side of Pike Avenue generally considered to extend between the Arkansas River and 18th Street, was the focus of a Smart Growth Implementation 101 Workshop last week provided by Smart Growth America. The nationwide coalition works with cities on strategies to fight sprawl and create mixed uses of housing, businesses and green space to create walkable, diverse communities.
The organization awarded North Little Rock with the technical assistance workshop for Baring Cross, chosen in a competitive process for a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. North Little Rock was among seven cities chosen for the grant from more than 60 applicants, according to a Smart Growth spokesman.
About 150 residents, city staff members, professional planners and state agency officials attended either all or part of a Wednesday evening meeting or the daylong Thursday session.
"The purpose is to help communities figure out how all of the pieces of the neighborhood development process fit together," said Alex Dodds, communications director for Smart Growth America. "There's already a couple of different things happening in Baring Cross, with a lot of reinvestment."
The neighborhood already has seen the opening of the Boone Park Elementary School, 1400 Crutcher St.; a National Parks Service grant to create a wetlands park and a trail between it and the elementary school; and a Transportation Alternatives Program grant to create a more pedestrian-friendly, tree-lined Pike Avenue (Arkansas 365), which has a daily traffic count of 20,000 vehicles, according to state Highway and Transportation Department figures.
The elementary school opened during the 2014-15 school year as part of the North Little Rock School District's $265 million capital improvement program.
Developments in Baring Cross over the past few years total about $46 million, said Lisa Ferrell, who, with her husband, Jim Jackson, has led that effort by developing the Rockwater Marina on the riverfront in lower Baring Cross as well as Rockwater Village's 33 lots for single-family houses on the riverfront and the adjacent Riverside at Rockwater apartment complex.
The purpose of the workshop, Ferrell said, was to help Baring Cross be "a thriving, mixed-use neighborhood," with amenities available to all residents, including meeting all types of housing needs.
One challenge, Hunter said, is making the neighborhood fit both younger and older residents. The younger millennials, he said, want to be able to ride their bicycles to get around, while older baby boomers need access to public transportation. Rock Region Metro buses stop along Pike Avenue, he said, but several residents who depend on public transportation, including some who use walkers, live blocks from Pike.
"We have to help our baby boomers as much as our millennials," Hunter said. "It's important for us keeping folks in the community and for us all to be on the same page.
"They [Smart Growth America] came to us and want to work with us and show us how we can make a difference," he said. "I see the whole process as positive. We love a challenge. We ask for folks to respect us and to deal with us and to give us a voice at the table. That's not been the case a lot of times.
"My role [as neighborhood association president] is to be sure everybody stays informed," Hunter said. "I want to be able to keep everybody focused and informed. "
The Smart Growth workshop process heavily involves the area's residents to make the changes they see as important. The city will file a report in a month to Smart Growth America for it to help guide the process, then give reports again in six and 12 months.
"You are the architects of the next life of Baring Cross," the organization's John Robert Smith told Thursday's workshop group. "This doesn't end when we leave town this afternoon."
Metro on 04/10/2016