Wanting to help with the expansion of a downtown business, Mayor Joe Smith is proposing that North Little Rock sell the 120-year-old E.O. Manees House, uprooting the Junior League, which has used the house as its headquarters for more than 50 years.
Smith's proposal would allow Allen Engstrom, owner of CFO Network, 321 Maple St., to buy the Manees House, 216 W. Fourth St., for $430,000. Engstrom's financial-consultant company is adjacent to the east side of the home's property.
The North Little Rock City Council will consider the transaction at its 6 p.m. meeting Monday.
"We tried to work out some parking issues for Allen Engstrom's firm to be able to expand," Smith said Friday. "We couldn't make it all work. When he offered to buy the building and keep the building and take care of the building, I thought it was a great opportunity for economic development downtown, because he'll bring in 10 to 20 new, professional jobs and spend over a million dollars on the building."
The sale would mean the Junior League, which acquired a 99-year lease with the city in 1962 to use the property, must look for another site to have its meetings and activities.
"Many, many years of meetings and parties and events and public service events have gone on there since it has been part of the Junior League, and even before that when it was part of the [city's] health department," said Kelly Phillips, the Junior League's president. "There have been lots of neat things in that building, and we are very sorry it will no longer be ours."
The Junior League, an organization of women promoting volunteerism, education and charity, meets twice monthly in the Manees House, but also used fees it gets for renting out the home for weddings, receptions and other events to support many of its projects.
The organization may share space in the short term with the North Little Rock Woman's Club that meets in Burns Park, Phillips said, "until we can research our options and pick something that works well for us."
Smith said he has met with the Junior League -- his wife, Missie, is among its members -- to explain his proposal for the city to sell the historic home and "to take all the blame" from any of the members upset over the plan.
"It's my fiduciary responsibility to take the offer to the City Council for its approval," Smith said of Engstrom's offer.
Smith said the hurdle for him was ensuring that the house is preserved under private ownership. The Manees House, built in December 1895, is within the Argenta Historic District and also is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
"My concern was that he wasn't going to tear it down," Smith said. "He said absolutely not."
Buying the property, Engstrom said Friday, is for his business "just planning on growing."
"We have close to 30 people with plans to grow to more than 40," Engstrom said. "We don't want to do any changes to the house. We definitely want to preserve the historical integrity of the house."
Because of the home's historic designations, and because it has received restoration grants previously from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, any exterior changes to the structure would need approval from the state agency and the North Little Rock Historic District Commission, said Sandra Taylor-Smith, executive director of the city History Commission.
Such a review would be required to "make sure nothing is altered beyond the historic character" of the structure, she said.
The Manees House, as it's most commonly called, is named after Elmer Olonzo Manees, who owned a dry-goods store in Argenta and served as a city alderman, according to a history of the house on the Junior League's website, jlnlr.org. Manees bought the house in 1908. Upon his death in 1941, the city purchased the home for $12,650 and used the building for its health department, according to the historical account.
In 1962, the Junior Service League of North Little Rock, which became the Junior League of North Little Rock in 1968, began leasing the home from the city.
The Manees House design is a Greek Revival style and can accommodate up to 135 guests, according to the league's website. The house contains a walnut staircase and a fireplace mantle of carved granite. The front door has an oval-centered beveled glass and leads into a foyer containing authentic hardwood floors.
While the Junior League will miss being associated with the Manees House, Phillips said, the city's proposal opens new opportunities for the organization.
"Part of what we are doing is truly assessing what our needs are, because this building has been used for so long, no one really looked at what are our meeting space needs," Phillips said. Relocating provides a chance "to assess what it is we really need for the activities that we do," she added.
"At first, of course, it was strange to think that we would not have the house," Phillips said. "But the longer we go on thinking about what we're going to do in the future, it is exciting to be able to have a fresh start and make a decision on where we would like to be and how we would like that future to look."
Metro on 05/22/2016