The downtown Little Rock properties housing the restaurant South on Main, the Oxford American offices and an art gallery have exchanged hands in a $1.75 million transaction.
Soma Storefronts LLC acquired the property at 1300 S. Main St. and 1304 S. Main St. from Albatross LLC in the transaction, which closed on April 25, according to online real estate records maintained by the Pulaski County assessor's office.
The deal included a parking lot across Main Street that has space for about 70 vehicles.
David Thompson of Hot Springs confirmed Tuesday that he is the sole investor behind Soma Storefronts, the same limited liability company that purchased a property that once housed Piano Kraft in an adjoining block for $800,000 a little more than a year ago.
That property at 1220 and 1224 Main St. now houses Dos Rocas Beer & Tacos and Atlas Bar and Small Plates.
Thompson also leads Tusk Holdings LLC, which he said has several investors, that is backing a $2.3 million mixed-use development at 1424 Main St., formerly the address of a Miracle Wash coin laundry.
Tusk Holdings purchased the property in November 2017 for $650,000. A month later it won approval from the Capitol District Zoning Commission to raze the closed laundromat that had operated there since 2003. Before that, the property was home to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
Work has begun on the mixed-use development, which will feature 16 apartments, five commercial spaces and a shared second-floor balcony. The two story structure will total 18,283 square feet. The three-block stretch of Main Street is in an area popularly known as SoMa.
"SoMa has a lot of momentum going," Thompson said Tuesday.
Altogether, Thompson's property purchases and the development project total $5.6 million in investments in those three blocks of Main Street.
Thompson said he has parlayed the sale of some farmland into commercial development. At 55, he is older than some of the younger people migrating to downtown apartments and houses, but he said he has kept up with "what's what" by spending time in the downtowns of larger "progressive" cities, including Nashville, Tenn., Austin, Texas, and Dallas.
"I like downtown Little Rock," Thompson said. "I just like what SoMa has to offer. It's a growing part of downtown ... because of the neighborhoods and the people already in the neighborhoods. There's a lot of different types of people, the professionals, the artists, the young and the old, it's got a little of all of it."
Thompson's latest purchase involves the property that once housed Juanita's Cafe and Bar, a Mexican restaurant and music venue.
The property's seller, Albatross, is led by Lisa M. McNeir, whose late husband, Frank McGehee, helped establish Juanita's. McGehee died in 2005.
The building housing the offices of the Oxford American, which bills itself as "a magazine of the South," and the M2 Gallery, which is an art gallery that also offers custom framing, was built in 1930.
The building housing South on Main, a restaurant and performance venue, was built in 1937.
Both buildings and the parking lot together have been appraised at $1.35 million, according to assessor records.
Newmark Moses Tucker will manage the property.
The parking lot was key in the latest purchase, Thompson said.
"I already had four buildings down there and those other three," he said. "We wanted to control the parking. We didn't want to lose it to somebody else [and have] seven retail spots down there with nothing but street parking left.
"The immediate future of that parking lot is to serve the retail units that are there."
Business on 05/08/2019