Officials kicked off an effort to craft a master plan for downtown Little Rock that is meant to guide future decision-making with an open house at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center on Wednesday.
Gabe Holmstrom, the executive director of the nonprofit Downtown Little Rock Partnership, called it a "very exciting time" in the history of downtown Little Rock.
"We have never done this as a city or as a downtown," he told attendees.
Growing up in the city, Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said he remembered when there was no downtown Little Rock. What was an industrial area was transformed because of the work of advocates in the mid-1990s, Scott said.
Today, advocates like the Downtown Little Rock Partnership and others are pushing for a "resurgence" of downtown Little Rock, Scott told attendees.
To craft the plan, the city of Little Rock has tapped the architecture, planning and design firm Sasaki.
Sasaki will be paid $705,000 for the consulting work. Additionally, the city has agreed to reimburse the firm for up to $40,000 in certain expenses, unless the city authorizes a change to the amount in writing, according to a signed copy of the contract.
Funding will be drawn from Little Rock's allocation of American Rescue Plan Act money.
The downtown zone that is set to go under the microscope is bounded by the Arkansas River to the north; Interstate 30, Ninth Street and Bond Street to the east; 14th Street/Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive to the south; and the Union Pacific railroad to the west, according to the contract.
The entire process, including focus groups and advisory committee meetings, is expected to take nine months, with a plan ready for public review by May.
"We are just at the beginning of this process, and so we are not here to tell you our grand plan for downtown Little Rock," Josh Brooks, a principal with Sasaki, told attendees. "We're here to actually take your input."
The master plan process is expected to generate distinct recommendations, according to Brooks.
"What we want this to be is not this beautiful grand plan that sits on a shelf that you've spent a bunch of money on, but really a number of tactical ideas that can start today," he said.
Downtown areas elsewhere can serve as an inspiration for Little Rock, but other things will need to be "uniquely a Little Rock idea," said Sasaki's Daniel Church, a Little Rock Central High School graduate who is serving as the project manager.
Attendees were polled in real time via their phones on matters related to downtown Little Rock and the master plan.
Amy Hopper Swan attended the open house as part of a group of about 30 cyclists who came "because we're really interested in making sure that mobility and transportation is a part of this plan," she told an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter. "And it seems like they're really taking that into account."
When the city's downtown heart "is thriving, then the rest of the city will thrive," former Mayor Mark Stodola said in an interview.
Stodola, who served from 2007 through the end of 2018, referred to efforts under his administration to focus on downtown Little Rock with the Creative Corridor and the Little Rock Technology Park. Main Street was "dead" when he started, Stodola said.
"It needs a boost," Stodola said, adding that "there's a lot of maintenance issues that have not been done."
Patricia Blick, the executive director of the Quapaw Quarter Association, said the members of the historic-preservation group want to make sure that individual historic resources like the Pike-Fletcher-Terry House as well as historic neighborhoods "get the attention and, if need be, some protection that they need."
"I think it's a long time coming," at-large City Director Antwan Phillips said of the downtown master plan.
He recalled that a master plan for downtown was one of the recommendations in 2017 from Think Big Little Rock, an assemblage of young professionals that included Phillips. Six years later, the idea finally is coming to fruition, he said.
Phillips described himself as a "big proponent" of more downtown density.
"I don't think downtown's bad at all right now," he said in an interview. "But some people think that, and I think this process will change that perception and make downtown as vibrant as it should be."
Officials are embarking on the master plan initiative approximately nine months after the unveiling of a tourism master plan that was commissioned by the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, which hired the firm Jones Lang LaSalle for the project.
Published in January, the tourism master plan is intended to serve as a "roadmap" for the next 10 years.