North Little Rock's tab tops $8,000 for Texas plaza trip

Mayor, 13 others visit Fort Worth in quest for downtown plaza ideas

Travel expenses for North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith, four city aldermen and nine city staff members to tour the Sundance Square Plaza operations in Fort Worth on Aug. 1 came to just more than $8,000, according to receipts filed with the city's Finance Department.

The total for the 14 people -- part of a group of 45-50 who made the trip -- totaled $8,073.76, with one alderman's receipts incomplete, city Finance Director Karen Scott said Friday. The money came from the mayor's travel budget or from travel budgets allowed for city departments, she said.

Scott provided a list of the city staff members' and elected officials' costs for airfare and a separate category that combined hotel, food and other expenses. Alderman Steve Baxter hadn't turned in his hotel and meal expenses as of Friday, Scott said, but his airfare paid ahead of the trip was $224.20, Scott's breakdown showed.

Six other travelers who have connections to a city board or commission or who receive city funding paid their own way or paid with money from their individual budgets, Smith said, and either flew by commercial airline or drove.

Others on the trip -- which included chamber of commerce officials, architects, engineers, real estate developers and business owners -- made their own arrangements and paid their own way or their companies paid, Smith has said.

The overnight trip was to provide an opportunity for community and business leaders in North Little Rock to get a firsthand look at Fort Worth's Sundance Square Plaza, which Smith wants to use as a model for a smaller public plaza on a vacant 0.66-acre lot along North Little Rock's Main Street within the city's historic Argenta District.

The 55,000-square-foot, privately funded Sundance Square Plaza is within the 35-block Sundance Square in Fort Worth's downtown and is surrounded by offices, restaurants, retail businesses, art galleries and museums. With jetted fountains, a cascading fountain, an iconic mural painted on a building wall and 40-foot by 40-foot, custom-made umbrellas to provide shade, the plaza is a popular gathering place for Fort Worth residents and tourists alike.

Smith said Friday that he saw the trip as "an opportunity to show a tremendous amount of our citizens what I envision."

"It's really hard to show a picture and get the whole effect of what I envision for North Little Rock's Main Street," Smith said. "Those who paid their own way to go see it, I think they understand that now, and it's a lot easier for me to be able to work on this development when I know I have a bunch of people behind me who understand what it is I'm trying to do."

In addition to the public plaza area, Smith's concept includes private development next to and behind it for retail stores, restaurants, shopping and offices to complement a planned array of townhouses, single-family houses and 150 "upscale apartments."

The city has issued requests for proposals for architects to develop the city's public area, Smith said.

The sale of adjoining parcels of city-owned properties for the private development could provide at least part of the funding for the plaza, he has said.

No sale of city properties has been finalized.

"We'll go through the process of selecting an architect to begin the process," Smith said. "We still haven't nailed down the entire private development around it. So we're maybe two to three weeks away before we can provide more information on that. We're waiting on one more proposal that's due."

The North Little Rock City Council last week approved paying up to $80,000 for the disconnection of Sprint Corp. fiber-optic lines that cross city and private property in the area of the former Prime Quality Feeds mill to the southeast of the plaza area.

The City Council also approved in January paying $425,000 to buy a narrow strip of land containing a Union Pacific railroad spur that cuts through the two properties.

The Mill LLC, headed by Harold Tenenbaum and Jack Grundfest, is to buy back from the city the portion where the spur crosses its private property, Smith has said.

Smith said at the time that the entire property would have a better chance of enticing developers to build a mix of offices and residences if the spur were not there.

Union Pacific officials have told city officials the company expects to close on the city's transaction with the spur in the next two weeks, Smith said.

"Once we get that done, we can start closing on other properties," Smith said.

"I think in the next 80-90 days the dominoes are going to start falling on what we want to do around [the plaza]. And we'll know who's doing it, what the budget will be for the plaza and how much money we'll have from the sale of the surrounding properties."

Metro on 08/29/2016

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