North Little Rock city attorneys ask to move

Proposal seeks $100,000 to refurbish city-owned building

Working space is becoming more scarce inside the North Little Rock city attorney's offices at City Hall, leading to plans for a move to a different city building that Jason Carter and staff will have to themselves.

Carter's current office doubles as the city attorney's conference room that any of the city's three other full-time attorneys can use for meeting space.

"When there's a meeting, I have to get out of my office," Carter said. "I think we've probably been cramped from whenever it was that we moved in here [in late 2000]. Mine is a pretty good-sized office, but having it as an office-slash-conference room makes it hard to have the space we need."

Plans call for the city attorney offices, now at the back of City Hall's first floor, to move into the city-owned, 3,300-square-foot North Little Rock Community Development building, 116 Main St., next to the City Services building. But that building needs extensive renovations before Carter and his staff can move there.

A resolution proposed to the North Little Rock City Council requests a maximum of $100,000 for those renovations, which will include replacing the roof, replacing the carpet with new flooring, replacing the building's front door with a more secure and energy-efficient one, and several other repairs. The resolution is on the City Council's agenda for its meeting today.

"The roof has some leaks, and those leaks have caused the floor to need some repairs," Carter said. "It needs painting and some mechanical work, some overall maintenance things that need to be done and things to improve security."

The work is planned to be completed and the move made by "sometime in May," Carter said.

The Community Development office relies on federal grants for its programs, and there's "not a lot budgeted for maintenance," Carter said, leading to that building's disrepair. All of the needed work will be bid by the city.

"It's a well-organized space for a small, government law firm in a way that ideally suits us," Carter said. "It'll just be us in it. And since it's a public-owned property, we won't be paying rent."

Once the city attorney's offices relocate, the city will juggle some other offices within City Hall and other buildings, city Chief of Staff Danny Bradley said.

The first-floor offices of Nathan Hamilton, the city's communications director; Jim Billings, special projects director; and Isaac Henry, special assistant to Mayor Joe Smith, will move into the larger city attorney's space, as plans stand right now, Bradley said.

The vacated space from their offices, across from the city clerk-treasurer's offices, will then be filled somehow, Bradley said.

"We're not sure what we'll do with that space," Bradley said. "We've been tossing around ideas for different possibilities on how to improve customer services."

The current city attorney's space includes Carter's office, two enclosed offices for Deputy City Attorney Marie-Bernarde Miller and Assistant City Attorney Daniel McFadden, currently on military duty in Kuwait, plus desks for office manager Becky Henderson and legal assistant Christina Yielding.

Assistant City Attorney Bill Brown's office is separated from the others, located across a wide hallway from Carter's. When Tjuana Byrd, an attorney on contract, comes in to work on city business, "she just has to sit wherever," Carter said.

"It's an oddly structured office space," Carter said. "Bill's across the hall. Marie's office is decent sized, but the other one is small. The one thing we all look forward to is having that dedicated conference room. We'll also have more secure access to our own office and improved security for our office. And we'll have sufficient places for everyone to sit."

Metro on 02/27/2017

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