A grassy lot on a leafy stretch of South Cedar Street will soon become one of the new housing options on deck for people with all levels of mobility in Little Rock.
A two-bedroom duplex will be the first units of 64 that Bo and Robert Springer, spouses and business partners, plan to build on property acquired from the city's land bank that have "universal accessibility" for people who use wheelchairs, as well as the deaf and blind.
That includes wheelchair-accessible doors in the entryway and throughout the home, as well as kitchen counters, stoves, sinks and bathrooms that can be fully accessed by people with limited mobility.
Bo Springer said the pair have been landlords in Little Rock for more than three decades, but when she received calls from people looking for accessible residences, she didn't find much.
"I would get some calls, and then started calling around for people I knew. 'Do you all have accessibility?' I could only find one place that had 100% accessibility, where the shower's not 6 feet up, where the coat rack for hanging your clothes is not 6 feet up," Springer said. "I just saw the need. I found the need and just wanted to fill it."
The plan is about three years in the making, Springer and city officials said at a groundbreaking ceremony last week. First Springer & Springer LLC purchased the property from the city's land bank, an inventory of properties established in 2007.
Local governments such as Little Rock's use land banks to acquire and manage vacant land with the goal of stabilizing neighborhoods and encouraging redevelopment.
City officials applauded the new project.
"The more we invest in our communities, the better our city will be, and this is a true testament of that," Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said.
Springer said it took time to get the title and zoning of the land in order and to finance the project. She said she expects construction at the 1705 S. Cedar St. site to take about three months.
The project is called Apple Castle Homes, in part because Springer said she wants tenants to feel like their home is "their castle."
She said the corporation will work with tenants to customize amenities to fit their needs as much as possible, and that the homes are geared toward people who want to live in a neighborhood, not a building or assisted-living community solely for people with limited mobility.
"They want to live in a neighborhood. Look how beautiful this lot is. It has beautiful trees; it has rabbits and birds and everything," she said. "They want to walk out on their porch, and they want to sit out like everybody else and be in neighborhoods that they can go to Walgreens or Walmart, or there's a bus line, that they can come and go to the store just like you and me."
The Springers have made arrangements to buy about 30 more lots from the land bank for universal accessibility development, at-large City Director Joan Adcock said. Adcock is the city board liaison to the city's Land Bank Commission.
"This is just the beginning," Adcock said. "They're going to be our neighbors, and that is something these people are looking for."
Thomas Nichols, legal director of the advocacy group Disability Rights Arkansas, said community integration for people with disabilities is the group's goal and that there is "absolutely" a need for inclusive housing in Arkansas.
"Not only is there a lack of accessible new housing for people with disabilities, but there's a lack of modifications to older buildings," he said.
Buildings that are in line with the Americans with Disabilities Act should be universally accessible, Nichols said, but changes that happen during the design process can mean the final product isn't, putting the onus on the person needing expanded access.
Additionally, developments like Apple Castle Homes that are built with the principles of universal design in mind have features that go beyond the standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Krista Macy, an architectural researcher and designer at the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access at the University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning in New York.
"It was first developed in the 1980s by architect Ron Mace, and he basically developed it because he saw a need for more accessibility than could really be mandated by law," Macy said. "If you were to talk to somebody who maybe was a wheelchair user, you would learn that even if a building is in compliance of the ADA, it's still pretty challenging to get around. Universal design seeks to expand on that."
Buildings designed that way can also make navigation easier for people who don't have disabilities. For instance, automatic doors and curb cuts can be helpful for people who are pushing strollers or have their arms full of groceries, Macy said.
Macy said universal design has become more prevalent in architecture in recent decades, which could be for both economic and social reasons.
"We've seen that there is much more interest in it, whether that be because people are realizing that there's a monetary value in providing spaces that more people can enter easily and use for whatever reason, [and] maybe it is the current movement" calling for inclusivity, she said.
The Springers have a personal connection to universal access. They realized their own home wasn't 100% accessible when they had their son's swim coach, the late paralympian Grover Evans, who used a wheelchair, over for dinner.
"I thought, instead of buying more rental property for people who already have housing, I wanted to make it special when they walk through their home, that they have the dignity," Bo Springer said.