Residents of the Capital View and Stifft Station neighborhoods questioned developers Tuesday about their plans for converting Little Rock's soon-to-be vacant Woodruff Early Childhood Center into a mixed-use complex of apartments and other features.
Audience members asked competing presenters about the possible rents, property management, traffic patterns, the cost of the community pool memberships, the availability of the school kitchen for community use, and the possible inclusion of a private preschool and artist quarters on the site.
The conversation, however, frequently returned to the use of the 1911-constructed building at 3010 W. Seventh St., as a school.
Ed Wills, a neighborhood resident, told representatives of Moses Tucker Real Estate Inc. and Cromwell Architects Engineers that he appreciated their track records that include decades of building landmark projects in downtown Little Rock.
"You guys have done a lot for the city and I appreciate that," Wills said. "Miami would probably do a lot for the city, too, I guess," he said referring to Ross Toyne of Miami, who, like Moses Tucker and Cromwell, presented plans for converting Woodruff into apartments.
"It just doesn't make sense to me when we know how critical an elementary and preschool are to a neighborhood to give up on that so quickly," Wills said.
Toyne's plan calls for pairing well-appointed apartments with a privately operated preschool center in one section of the building. He's offered $250,000 for the campus, prompting Danielle Ray, a neighborhood association president, to say, "That doesn't seem fair."
The Moses Tucker plan calls for about two dozen affordable apartments, with community meeting space and an outside swimming pool and recreation space. The Little Rock developers have offered $700,000 for the site that Dan Fowler, Cromwell's chief operating officer, said has challenges but the "bones are fantastic."
Anika Whitfield and Ingrid Green also made presentations Tuesday to an audience of about 60 in the Woodruff school cafeteria. Both of their proposals called for maintaining Woodruff as a Little Rock School District early childhood education center for 3- and 4-year-olds.
Whitfield, who has led a monthslong campaign against closing district schools, told the group that the district's leaders estimate the annual savings of closing Woodruff to be about $150,000, as employees would retain jobs but be relocated to other campuses.
She recommended that the district initiate a fundraising campaign among businesses to keep the school open in the same way that the Bald Knob School District saved its district several years ago when it was threatened with closure.
"We are Little Rock. Come on people. We can do this," she said, calling on the real estate developers, Mayor Mark Stodola, Superintendent Mike Poore and the neighborhood organizations to help.
The Little Rock School District earlier this year requested proposals for use of its Woodruff and Franklin schools after Poore recommended that three schools in the district be closed in the coming 2017-18 school year and a fourth -- Wilson Elementary -- be repurposed as an alternative learning center. Shuttering or changing the use of the schools is projected to save $3.8 million as the district attempts to prune $11 million from its budget for the coming school year.
The cuts are being made in preparation for the end of $37.3 million a year in state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year and because of reduced state funding due to declines in student enrollment.
A public forum will be held at 6 p.m. today at Franklin Elementary, 1701 S. Harrison, on proposals made for acquisition and use of that campus.
Poore told the Woodruff audience that advisory groups, made up of representatives of the neighborhood associations, will review the written comments people make about the school use proposals. Ultimately Poore will make recommendations to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who acts as the school board in the state-controlled Little Rock school system.
The availability of the two school properties comes at a time when the Arkansas Legislature has just passed Act 542 of 2017, which grants public charter schools located in a district a stronger right-of-first-access to unused or underused traditional public school facilities.
Poore said the law -- which he lobbied against -- will not take effect until February 2018, giving the district time to find uses for vacant campuses.
Toyne, the Florida developer, promised the audience Tuesday that he would not permit Woodruff to become a charter school should he become the owner of the site.
Metro on 04/12/2017