PINE BLUFF -- A new public space in the heart of downtown will serve as an art space, a meeting space and an outdoor seating area for a restaurant that officials hope will soon be located next door in the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Business Services Incubator.
Lori Walker, assistant director for Economic and Community Development, said plans are also in the works for additional development of the 601 Main Street Plaza project.
Currently, the 13,000-square-foot plaza includes two landscape beds for decorative plants bordered with low, wide walls that will provide casual seating. Along the eastern edge of the plaza is a raised stage area with a curved backdrop that will accommodate public programs and events. A large open area in the center provides space for lawn chairs for community concerts or other events.
Tables will be installed along the southern edge of the site next door to the business incubator building, Walker said, and sidewalks along the perimeter will get face-lifts when the downtown streetscape project gets underway.
The project has been on the city's wish list since at least 2009 and is part of a larger initiative aimed at revitalizing downtown.
"Ten years ago, 601 Main Street was a detail shop and before that a gas station. It sat underutilized in the heart of our downtown," Mayor Shirley Washington said during Thursday's dedication of the plaza. "This plaza will serve as a place where our community will gather for celebrations and events, enjoy as [people] travel through a revitalized downtown and learn about the history of our beloved city."
The plaza sits atop the former site of a Kerr-McGee service station, which was designated as a "brownfield" site by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA defines a brownfield site as property where expansion, redevelopment or reuse of the property may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant. There are an estimated 450,000 brownfields in the United States, the agency said.
In the case of the new park, years of use as a service station left the ground contaminated with petrochemicals that had leached into the soil from oil, gasoline and automotive lubricants that were stored and used on the site.
Walker said the city received a $200,000 Brownfields Assessment Program grant from the EPA in 2009 for assessment of contamination in preparation for repurposing the site. In 2014, she said, the city received an additional $200,000 EPA Brownfields Cleanup grant to go toward the $467,000 cost of cleaning up the contamination and construction of the plaza.
Walker said Henry Golatt, the former director of the Economic Research and Development Center at UAPB, took the concept of creating the downtown plaza to the city after it had acquired the property in 2009
The city used the Brownfields Cleanup grant to clear 6 inches of contaminated soil, replace it with a 6-inch layer of topsoil, and install the decorative concrete cap. The remainder of the $467,000 project, Walker said, was funded by proceeds from a 0.625% sales tax passed in 2011 and urban renewal funding from the 2017 Go Forward Pine Bluff sales tax.
"We sought to be innovative in our design," Walker said. "This whole concrete plaza is a cap. We intentionally designed the cap to be an asset and not just a big block of concrete."
According to a report prepared in 2012 by Terracon Consultants Inc. in Bryant, the site was enrolled in the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Brownfields Assessment Grant program in November 2009, and the city purchased the property the next month.
The report said numerous contaminants -- including concentrations of arsenic, barium, benzene, chromium, ethylbenzene, lead, napthalene and selenium -- were found in soil at the site. With the exception of selenium, the report noted, the contaminants were found either in levels below naturally occurring levels or below human safety levels for an industrial setting.
Officials were comfortable repurposing the brownfield site for the plaza, Washington said.
"After working with our partners at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to design and implement a thorough cleanup plan to protect public health, we are confident that this former brownfield has been transformed into a plaza that the public will be able to enjoy safely," she said.
State Desk on 05/05/2019