During lunch at the Little Rock Club, Gabe Holmstrom looks out the 30th-floor window of the Regions Building and down on the neighborhood he represents.
Holmstrom, the executive director of the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, was hired in March 2015 to head the nonprofit organization. He worked for Marion Berry when Berry represented Arkansas' 4th Congressional District. He later worked for an advertising agency and was the chief of staff for the Arkansas House of Representatives. Now Holmstrom promotes a neighborhood that has seen plenty of construction during the past decade but also has seen unfulfilled promises and legal entanglements slow progress in the city's central business district.
An out-of-state developer named Scott Reed had grand plans that city leaders unfortunately bought into. Reed was unable to finish projects, and litigation stalled downtown development. There have been other announced developments that have yet to bear fruit. In 2014, the Chi family of Little Rock said that it planned to transform the historic Boyle Building into an Aloft Hotel. More than three years later, the Boyle Building is still a sad, empty shell at one of the state's most famous intersections, Capitol and Main. The haunting emptiness of that building overshadows development elsewhere on Main Street.
In February of this year, a group of young developers known as Rock Capital Real Estate announced that they would transform the 1923 Hall-Davidson Building and the adjoining Hall Building Annex into a boutique hotel, restaurant and bar. One partner, 33-year-old Blake Smith, boldly talked of a "changing of the guard" among Little Rock developers and said the hotel would "accommodate people who are in their 30s, who are coming in for business and they don't want to stay at the Hilton Garden Inn or wherever and get a free biscuit or muffin. We want to make downtown more relevant for this generation." He spoke of veteran developer John Flake and said, "He's a mentor of mine, but he's not going to be around forever. We're stepping in." More than 10 months later, there have been no specifics revealed.
Holmstrom remains confident that the projects will move forward. In June, the Chi family indicated that plans for the Boyle Building will include 96 apartments rather than just a hotel. In November, the 92-year-old Donaghey Building on Main Street sold for $5.7 million. The Virginia-based limited partnership that bought it announced plans to convert the 170,000-square-foot building into 152 apartments. Work is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2018 and conclude in November 2019.
"There's an unmet demand for places to live downtown," Holmstrom says. "By the spring, the city will have completed the streetscape work on both sides of Main Street. Pretty soon, you'll be able to walk from the River Market District all the way to South Main Street with plenty to do along the way. The gaps are slowly but surely being filled in. By January 2020, I think we'll be close to having a true 24-hour downtown. Everybody loves to talk about what the millennials want, and the top thing they want is a walkable city. But they aren't alone in that. We find that that everyone from law school and medical school students to empty-nesters want to live downtown and be able to walk to work, restaurants, concerts, museums and other attractions."
He points to the 300 block of Main Street as an example of what he hopes will happen elsewhere downtown.
"Five years ago, there were no restaurants on that block," Holmstrom says. "Soon there will be six."
Samantha's Taproom & Wood Grill, Bruno's Little Italy and Soul Fish Cafe do good business on one side of the street. On the other side of Main Street, Brewski's opened earlier this fall and apartments above the sports bar now are being marketed as Mulberry Flats. The adjacent Rose Building, a 1900 design by noted Arkansas architect George Mann, soon will be the home of a restaurant known as Ira's and a downtown location of Asian restaurant A.W. Lin's, which already does business at the Promenade in west Little Rock. Holmstrom also points to an upscale bowling alley known as the Dust Bowl and an adjoining German-style beer hall named Fassler Hall on Capitol Avenue as proof that downtown development isn't confined to Main Street and the River Market District.
"There's going to have to be a broader discussion at the Legislature about things we can do to encourage development in downtowns across the state," Holmstrom says. "We should be recruiting out-of-state developers to make downtown investments just as aggressively as we recruit industry. I constantly receive calls from developers wanting to know about tax-abatement programs in Arkansas. I have to be honest and tell them that we don't have a lot to offer."
In February, Holmstrom announced the start of what's known as an ambassadors program. The two employees walk the streets, help visitors and report various maintenance issues. With aggressive panhandling a persistent problem downtown, the ambassador corps needs to be expanded.
"It's going to take money, but I would love to see the program expand," Holmstrom says. "Kansas City has 75 ambassadors downtown. They do everything from picking up trash to removing graffiti to walking people to their cars."
------------v------------
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 12/23/2017