The first residents of the rejuvenating Main Street have landed in downtown Little Rock.
Everyone knew this moonshot would reach its crucial first stage with a footstep across the threshold.
Moonshot? Perhaps a forgivable hyperbole, given the decades of plans and failures to lift the old Little Rock business district back into the orbit of the living.
By the time you read this, all 19 apartments in the Mann Lofts at 310 Main will probably be occupied. A small step in one sense.
And there’s the equivalent of lunar dust on the stairway, covered in brown paper and tape in the first days, as a young man climbs to his second-story flat about 5 p.m. Thursday.
Adam Carll has just walked from his place of work, Stephens Inc., a distance of about four blocks.
He moved in five days earlier, and is sleeping on an air mattress. Two bar stools at the island are the only other furniture so far.
Atlanta’s his hometown, and this is his first real job out of the University of Alabama, where he majored in finance. He started working for Stephens, where he is a stockbroker, in January.
He moved from the Enclave, a huge complex in North Little Rock, where he paid more than he does at the Mann Lofts, which is $860 for his one-bedroom place.
Tall windows bathe the room in light and allow a view of the K Lofts across the street, another reclamation project. The ambience of the Mann, even in its barely finished state, is “awesome,” said Carll, 23. Plus, it allows him five minutes more of sleep before he leaves for work at 5:30 a.m.
Charles Idleman has his two small Havanese dogs on leashes as he takes them on their afternoon constitutional. Idleman, 42, an instructor at Grand Master Han’s Martial Arts, had lived for two years in the Tuf-Nut Lofts, a mere three blocks to the east, and an earlier downtown effort by Moses Tucker Real Estate.
Moses Tucker “learned a lot from Tuf-Nut,” Idleman said. The construction quality of the Mann is superior, including cabinetry, and better soundproofing makes the apartment quieter, from inside and outside the building, he said. Trucks from the post office near the Tuf-Nut Lofts leave at 3 a.m.and the Hampton Inn and Suites pool parties last till late at night, he said.
He and his girlfriend live in a two-bedroom apartment with about 1,000 square feet and pay $1,200, he said.
The Mann Lofts come in studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom configurations, ranging from 560 square feet to 1,100 and cost $1.20 per square foot, on average, says Margaret Bell of Moses Tucker. That includes water, trash pickup, sewage and secured parking in the deck behind them.
All come with lofty 13-foot ceilings.
The condo market - which led the way, off-Main, in new living space downtown - is overbuilt, at least for the next couple of years while the surplus is worked down.
Meantime, the number of apartments is growing to feed the demand for the urban lifestyle.
Scott Reed and partners’ latest plan would add 56 loft units on Capitol Avenue between Louisiana and Center streets. Reed and partners are building another 68 units in the Main Street Lofts between Capitol and Sixth.
Add 32 in the K Lofts, construction of which Reed has just started above the Montego Cafe at 315 Main. Reed says he has a waiting list there and at the Main Street Lofts. Reed’s Main Street apartments are expected to be completed by the end of the year.
That’s at least 175 that could hit the market this year or in 2014.
And there may be more coming along on Main and elsewhere downtown. There are rumblings along those lines. Of course, rumblings are cheap talk.
Nevertheless, with interest rates still low and the residential market across the board continuing to rise after its collapse in 2008, the time would seem to be right.
But the time was right to build condos a few short years ago.
Timing on the other end - when to stop - is a different matter. That’s another risk for developers.
If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or e-mail him at
Business, Pages 63 on 06/30/2013