Roughly 130,000 vehicles use the Interstate 30 corridor through Little Rock to cross the Arkansas River every day.
That statistic was used last September in a letter from the Arkansas Highway Commission to the U.S Department of Transportation.
The letter was part of an application submitted by Little Rock in a bid to receive a planning study grant as part of the Reconnecting Communities Program. Established by President Joe Biden's bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the program's goal is to "reconnect communities that are cut off from opportunity and burdened by past transportation infrastructure decisions."
That grant -- for the maximum of $2 million -- was awarded in February.
In Little Rock's case, the "past transportation infrastructure" decision was the construction of I-30 in the early 1960s, and the project's mission is to reconnect the communities divided by it to the east and west.
The end goal: the construction of a deck park spanning I-30, located between the Sixth Street and Ninth Street bridges.
The project is inspired by a similar one located in Dallas.
Klyde Warren Park is a 5-acre construct located over the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, a recessed eight-lane freeway. Started in 2009 and opened in 2012, the deck park cost $110 million. Of that, $20 million came from Dallas, another $20 million came in the form of highway funds from the state of Texas, $16.7 million came from stimulus funds, and the rest originated from donors to the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation.
"Klyde Park was built several years ago, and that's a nine-figure number," said Mayor Frank Scott Jr., a champion of the project. "We expect it to be a nine-figure number here in the city of Little Rock as well. We don't know the specifics, but we definitely can see it. If not nine figures, eight figures. We know it's going to be very expensive."
When asked how he believed the city would fund the project, Scott said he saw it being funded as a "partnership."
"Sometimes there are projects where the federal government may fund 80% of the project, to 60% of the project," Scott said. "We definitely see significant funding from the federal government. And of course, the city's gonna have to put some skin in the game at least from a bond perspective, and we'll cross that path once we get done with the planning stage."
Of course, the proposed project would coincide with the ongoing 30 Crossing project, which is projected to be completed by 2025.
When asked on March 31, moments before a tornado would touch down in the city, Scott said there was "no target date" for the potential deck park's completion.
"I think we do know that the actual Interstate 30 Crossing project will be completed around 2025," Scott said. "We clearly (want to) take advantage of construction deadlines as best as possible. And so it could be anywhere between '25 and 2027."
Well before any construction could begin, the planning study has to happen to analyze the feasibility of the project.
That itself could be a multi-year process.
"Something of this magnitude, it's our understanding the planning study is at least a two- to three-year process," Scott said. "You take the 30 Crossing project, before the construction even happened it was at least three to five years: one, planning and then two, going through the community stakeholder process before you start construction, which I was a part of when I was highway commissioner. So it can be anywhere from two to five years."
According to the Budget Narrative in the application submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the $2 million planning grant -- in addition to $490,000 from the city -- would be spent on seven tasks:
Data collection and equity analysis ($40,000 from grant).
Traffic and mobility study, existing and future ($80,000).
Economic Feasibility study and alternative evaluation ($320,000).
Community Participation Plan (CPP) and engagement ($400,000).
Impact and mitigation evaluation ($80,000).
Preliminary or conceptual engineering ($1 million).
Cost estimate ($80,000).
APPLICATION
Before Little Rock could receive any federal money devoted to the proposed deck park, it had to make its case for why the city deserved it.
To do that, the engineering firm Garver was chosen to put together the Project Narrative that it submitted to the Department of Transportation in September.
After collaborating with the city, the Arkansas Department of Transportation, the Coalition of Little Rock Neighborhoods and others, Garver produced a 10-page document detailing how I-30 negatively affected the surrounding neighborhoods after its construction in the early 1960s and how a park deck would help rectify the damage.
"We were able to show them through writing the grant that it was a really good and doable project that would serve the community well," said Bob Cook, Garver's government relations director, who agreed it could be described as a "hypothesis."
"We had to use things like census data to show that one side of the I-30 was not as prosperous as the other side of it," Cook said. "We used historical data to show that prior to I-30, there was more connectivity than there is now between that one side of I-30 and the other side. ...
"You have to have the data that checks the boxes of the things that they want, but you also have to tell a compelling story about how the grant is going to positively impact the community in which it's going to be done."
Notable insights from the report include:
The study area -- covering the River Market, MacArthur Park, Hanger Hill and the area of East Little Rock adjoining the Arkansas River -- contains about 2,363 people.
The entire eastern half of the area is defined as an Economically Disadvantaged Community (per EJScreen's Socioeconomic Indicator for low-income, block groups in the 80th percentile or above).
The percentage of families below the poverty level on the east side of I-30 ranges from 200% to 400% greater than the city, county and state of Arkansas averages. The west side is less than or equal to the same averages.
56% of the people in the southern portion of the study area are Black, while 35% are white. From 2010 to 2020, there was a 13% decrease in population within the whole study area. Roughly 1/4 of those leaving are Black.
While it wrote the report, Garver isn't guaranteed to actually conduct the planning study.
It has to go through the Request for Proposal process like any other interested firm.
"We'll respond to that RFP and we hope to be doing this work," said Cook, who added that it typically takes two to three months for an RFP to be written and the selection to take place.
If selected, Garver would get "to do some experimentation" to hopefully prove its hypothesis correct, leading to a construction grant, which "allows us to start doing the building."
Before the project can move forward with the process of selecting an engineering firm such as Garver to do the study, those involved in the project must take part in a series of webinars put on by the Federal Highway Administration guiding them through the process of "development and approval of the Grant Agreement."
According to the email notification from the FHWA to the Little Rock Public Works department about the webinars, "Any expenditures incurred before the Grant Agreement is signed by both your jurisdiction and FHWA will not be reimbursed."
A city spokesman said Little Rock officials will meet with federal partners to discuss the RFP process this week.
SUPPORTERS
The I-30 deck park is still just a concept, one backed by data and a large group of supporters who hope it can come to fruition.
They include Dr. Dean Kumpuris, the Position 8 at-large city director.
"It still might not happen," Kumpuris said. "We've got a $2 million planning grant. And we can mess it up completely. I don't think we will. But we could. I think people are real serious about it."
Kumpuris said a primary motivation for him behind the deck park project is to prevent those living along the I-30 corridor from experiencing the same divide as those living north and south of Interstate 630.
"You build a true bridge between the people that are east of I-30 and west of I-30," Kumpuris said. "So that you're building a park to connect one community to another so that instead of what happened with 630, we now have an opportunity to say to people 'we're all together.'"
Kumpuris added that the project would complement the work done in the riverfront area over the decades.
"We took out all that junk between Second and Third streets and all those funny loops coming off [I-30] to get to Markham and will now have a 19-acre park down there," Kumpuris said. "So if you then look at what we've done at Riverfront Park over the last 15 or 20 years, and then you take a 19-acre park stretches from Cumberland to the Clinton Library. Then you say, 'well, we're putting $130 million into an art center in MacArthur Park.' If you put in another park adjacent between Sixth and Ninth streets, then for the entire community you're making it where you have a string of parks to stretch from the river to MacArthur Park."
Both Kumpuris and Cook credited Kathy Wells, president of the Coalition of Little Rock Neighborhoods, for rallying support for the deck park.
Kumpuris described both Wells and Ward 1 Director Virgil Miller as being "human tornadoes" in the effort.
Wells was tasked with distributing a sample letter to community leaders, including church leaders, for them to sign showing their support for the project.
She also contributed her own letter in the application process, citing the coalition's previous opposition to the expansion of I-30 and any future expansion to I-630, and that "we urge the remedy of deck parks to heal those divides."
A life-long resident of Arkansas who has lived in Little Rock since 1979, Wells explained why the deck park is important to her.
"I am so pleased at the leadership in government at all levels that has finally recognized the harm and the damage and the injury to these communities that was done by the original construction of I-30 and I-630," Wells said. "And the very plain statement that they recognize they have separated communities and that they wish to mitigate that with unifying construction is a very welcome development and is good government at its finest."
Should the deck park become a reality, Wells has a wish list of amenities she'd like to see part of it, including the use of strictly Arkansas native plants and a water feature, possibly a koi pond or a meditation garden.
Wells would put an emphasis on an element to be used by families.
"Because when you're reconnecting east and west, this isn't going to be a place where teams meet or groups meet, or officials have conferences," Wells said. "I'm believing from what people have talked to me about in the course of getting the support letters for the deck park, what is wanted and is really missing in that part of our community is a place where families can come out."