Road to lose 2 lanes on North Little Rock riverfront for apartments, potential restaurants and hotel

Reducing Riverfront Drive from four lanes to two lanes will slow traffic and add street parking while helping secure a planned apartment complex to be developed along North Little Rock's riverfront, Mayor Joe Smith said Monday.

On Monday evening, the North Little Rock City Council gave its approval to downsize Riverfront Drive and to sell 0.64 of an acre of right of way on the street's south side and just west of the Broadway bridge to Smarthouse Way LLC for $139,475.

The right of way sale will allow public parking along Riverfront Drive, both for the 210-unit, three-story apartment complex and for potential restaurants and a hotel the developers want to add at a later date. The apartments are scheduled to break ground by this fall, said Doug Meyer, a managing partner for TerraForma LLC, a real estate development company in Maumelle. Smarthouse Way LLC is a subsidiary of TerraForma for the Riverfront Drive project.

The resolution to make Riverfront Drive two lanes passed, 6-1. Council member Linda Robinson voted no after asking for a vote to be delayed for more discussion. Council member Steve Baxter was absent. Separate legislation for the right of way sale and amending the city's master street plan both passed, 7-0.

The city acquired Riverfront Drive from the state Department of Transportation earlier this year in order to be able to have the development occur, Smith said Monday.

The project will be built on the 5.8-acre Smarthouse Way property that the city has been trying to sell for development since 2005. Smarthouse Way LLC bought the property from the North Little Rock Public Building Authority in February for $2.532 million.

"We want to slow traffic down so the apartments can be built," Smith said in explaining why he didn't want to hold the legislation until a later date.

The location, just west of the Broadway Bridge and the Dickey-Stephens Park baseball stadium, will be near the Riverfront Bike Trail and within a half-mile walk of the city's Argenta District downtown, Verizon Arena and the pedestrian Junction Bridge that crosses the Arkansas River to the River Market entertainment district in Little Rock.

"This apartment complex will have 210 apartments, so that will be 400 to 500 people living within two blocks of any business on that street," Smith said. "Restaurants in this area just added 400-500 more customers. Half of those tenants will move there because of the access from the apartments to the bike trail."

Chris Wilbourn, the city's chief engineer, in answering council members' questions, said Riverfront Drive has an average daily traffic count of about only 5,200 vehicles, so downsizing it to two lanes won't affect traffic movement through the city's downtown area.

"Traffic on Riverfront Drive has never been high," Wilbourn said. "There isn't a traffic reason to keep it at four lanes."

TerraForma's Meyer said last week that the majority of the apartments planned will have river views, with restaurants in a mixed-use setting. The group is still negotiating for a hotel to be part of the development, he said.

Metro on 07/10/2018