PINE BLUFF -- For more than two years, downtown sections of Main Street have been blocked with debris from buildings that have fallen or been torn down.
Those who do business on Main Street are ready to clean up the place.
"You have to go through a maze to get here, and a lot of people say, 'Why bother?'" Kendrick "Pop" Williams, owner of Pop's Barber & Beauty Shop, said Friday afternoon while tending to his customers. "When people come in from out of town, you have to go out and show them how to get here."
Michael Lasley, a customer at Pop's, agreed that it's time for the clutter to go.
"Main Street is supposed to be Main Street," he said. "I think it should be clear."
Pine Bluff City Council members will hear tonight the second reading of a proposed ordinance that would establish a deadline requiring Main Street, north of Fifth Avenue to Fourth Avenue, to be cleared and open for traffic in all lanes by midnight Dec. 31.
For the past year Danny Bradshaw, owner of Mr. Brick Antique Brick Buy and Sell, has been heading a reclamation project of bricks and debris. Bradshaw isn't charging the city for the work, and there is no written contract between the city and Bradshaw requiring that cleanup be completed by a certain time.
Alderman Steven Mays introduced the proposed ordinance that would establish the Dec. 31 deadline for cleanup. He proposed a similar ordinance in May.
"No project goes on forever to block the progress or delay the city," Mays said. "... We've gotten two lanes open after the last three months because the first ordinance I put in, and he did move [some] things out of Main Street, but I'm looking forward to having all four lanes open."
The Garland Trice building in the 800 block of Main Street began to fall down about two years ago. Three more buildings -- the Band Museum in the 400 block of Main Street, the Veterans of Foreign Wars building nearby and the Khan's Jewelry building -- fell last fall.
Mayor Debe Hollingsworth said she presented the council with a bid of about $325,000 to clean up the debris from the Band Museum building that was blocking the street, but council members voted it down.
"They said they were not going to pay out any money to clean all this up and make it where we could get through," Hollingsworth said. "That was their choice. They just didn't supply any solutions."
Hollingsworth said Bradshaw approached her in the summer of 2015 with an offer to clean up the debris.
"He came into my office and said, 'Mayor, I want to buy those buildings. I'll take them down myself to salvage the brick and it won't cost the city a penny,' " Hollingsworth said. "It was like an angel walked in. I don't know what we would have done if he wouldn't have done that.
"All in all we have had three buildings taken down and it didn't cost the city one penny."
Bradshaw bought the Band Museum and Khan's buildings and has been working since last year to get them torn down and the debris cleared. Hollingsworth said Bradshaw couldn't buy the VFW building because it hasn't been determined who owns it.
Hollingsworth said she doesn't have a problem with the council setting a deadline for Bradshaw, but she said enforcing the ordinance would be difficult because there is no contract between Bradshaw and the city.
Mays said a deadline is needed so the city can go about efforts to restore the downtown area.
"Taxpayers are really concerned about the road," Mays said. "They want the road unblocked. It is blocking progress and productivity as far as our downtown is concerned."
The ordinance will be read for a third and final time and voted on during the council's Oct. 17 meeting.
State Desk on 10/03/2016