With redevelopment of the former Baptist Memorial Hospital property stuck in neutral, North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith says it's time for a project to start moving forward or face condemnation.
The city sold the six-story building and its 40 acres, One Pershing Circle at Memorial Drive, for $200,000 in 2010 to One Pershing Circle LLC of Little Rock, led by Bob Francis. Demolition soon started, then stopped, according to city records.
Now the site has become an illegal dumping ground for trash, with what remains of the structure determined to be "a serious fire and health hazard" and a public nuisance, with graffiti "all over" it, according to a city Code Enforcement Department report.
Smith is proposing all of the property's remaining structures identified by the city as hazards be condemned and ordered razed and removed by the owner within 30 days of any future action by the North Little Rock City Council.
"This is my way of telling them something has got to be done, and what are you going to do," Smith said. "This is just the beginning of trying to make something up there happen to the good.
"I've been working with them for a number of years trying to encourage them to be a little bit more aggressive in their redevelopment plans," Smith said. "I think they've missed some opportunities over the years they could have taken advantage of there.
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"Now people are starting to dump up there and probably are sleeping up there, some of the homeless," he said. "So I just feel like it's time to let the developer know it's been nine years. Work with us, talk to us. Get our economic development people involved, whatever it takes."
Laura Petty, a city Code Enforcement officer, said in a July 31 memo to the mayor and City Council that a public-nuisance letter was issued in June 2018, as well as a letter from the city fire marshal for fire code violations. After being granted additional time in November to rectify the violations, a second public nuisance letter was issued this summer and an inspection showed no progress being made, Petty wrote.
Messages left at a phone number provided for Francis weren't returned by late Friday afternoon.
"It's just been sitting there," Code Enforcement Director Tom Wadley said. "People have called about the building itself and that people are dumping on the property. We thought we should move forward and get the structure demolished and cleaned up. I think it was one of those things that wasn't on the front burner until just lately."
A bond issue approved by North Little Rock voters in 1957 led to the city building the hospital on the 40-acre, hilltop site that offers a sweeping view of both North Little Rock and Little Rock.
"It certainly has one of the more commanding views of the city," North Little Rock History Commission Executive Director Sandra Taylor-Smith said in a May 21, 2007, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article.
Baptist Memorial opened in 1962 as North Little Rock's first general hospital, having leased the city-owned building. The hospital closed in November 1999 when Baptist Health Medical Center opened on Springhill Drive off Interstate 40. Several state government offices occupied the 222,106-square-foot building from April 2001 to April 2006, having to configure functional work spaces among the large, former patient rooms and surgical areas.
Attempts to sell the property for redevelopment fell through until the 2010 sale, Smith said.
"We had many different visions for up there that have not come to fruition," Smith said. "All of that happened about the time of the 2008 recession and it just got pushed back four to five years and, all of a sudden, it got forgotten.
"That 40 acres up there, and the view. I've seen artist renderings of high-rise condominiums up there with a downtown river view, and for an assisted living development," Smith said. "I've also worked with the [Veterans Administration] on it for potential VA development. Everything just gets right to the very edge and we're not able to push it over. This is my way of starting to push."
Metro on 08/26/2019