I-30 upgrade planners canvass residents' ideas

A map showing the location of the Interstate 30 corridor study area.
A map showing the location of the Interstate 30 corridor study area.

In the 1970s, downtown Little Rock neighborhood advocates said the construction of Interstate 630 came at the destruction of the area's historic and cultural fabric.

Forty years later, they say they fear a project to improve the Interstate 30 corridor through the downtowns of Little Rock and North Little Rock will do the same thing for what is left of those neighborhoods. At an estimated cost of upward of $450 million, it will be the state's largest road construction project ever undertaken.

"We are incredibly concerned with what might happen with I-30 and what will happen to the neighborhoods," said Robin Loucks, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association and a member of the MacArthur Park Group.

But she and others also say that state highway officials and their consultants, who hosted two meetings last week in both downtowns to solicit ideas and concerns from the people who live and work within the corridor, seem more receptive this time.

"It's not like the old days -- 'This is it, too bad,'" said Tony Curtis, whose real-estate brokerage business focuses on downtown properties. "They are willing to listen and work with our concerns."

More than 250 people attended the two meetings convened by the engineers overseeing the project to gauge community concerns.

Claiming to have no preconceived notions on what they will do to ease congestion through the corridor, the highway officials' maps included no designs, just markers identifying significant features within the corridor, which is about a half-mile wide and 6.7 miles long.

The features include about a dozen mostly black churches; MacArthur Park; and other historic districts, schools and what engineers call significant traffic generators, such as the Clinton Presidential Center, the River Market retail and restaurant district, and Verizon Arena.

Curtis and other people who attended the public meetings identified other significant features the engineers overlooked, such as the historic Woodruff House in the Hangar Hill neighborhood of Little Rock on the east side of I-3o.

The house was built in 1853 by the founder of the Arkansas Gazette, William E. Woodruff, according to the Quapaw Quarter Association, which works to preserve historical significant properties. The house now is vacant, but the association said on its website that recent development in downtown has sparked interest among preservationists to restore the property.

Jerry Holder, an engineer for the Garver LLC engineering consulting firm based in North Little Rock and the construction manager for the I-30 project, said engineers had taken the ideas and concerns from the public meeting Tuesday and brought them up in their own meetings Wednesday.

"My guys are really listening," he said. "We're taking back what we hear to our own meetings. That's what everybody wanted out of them. It's happening.

"People should be happy about that. I'm happy about it."

When possible, the ideas and suggestions gleaned from last week's meetings will be taken into account when engineers begin drawing up a series of alternative designs to address congestion and other traffic problems within the corridor, which sees about 125,000 vehicles cross the Arkansas River bridge on I-30 every day.

The corridor and bridge, built 50 years ago, has always been congested, but even nearby residents acknowledged it is long past the point that something should be done about it.

"I'm so sick of this congestion," said Panchita Brown, a 60-year-old retired caregiver who lives on McAlmont Street behind Horace Mann Middle School, which is at East Roosevelt Road and I-30. "It reminds me of New York or Dallas."

A 2003 study of the area freeway system recommended widening I-30 to five lanes in each direction from the three lanes now. State highway officials also have talked of replacing the I-30 bridge, but federal highway officials say it is too early in the process to say it will be replaced.

And talk of displacing part or all of any neighborhood is premature, Holder said.

"Our goal is not to bother the neighborhoods, if at all possible," he said. "We're not far enough along to determine that."

The hearing attracted other residents such as Shari Rush, who lives in a neighborhood surrounding East 21st Street in a home she inherited from her father.

"My house is off the service road," she said. "I just wanted to know what was going on."

Rush said she wants something done about the congestion, but at the same time, "I want my home, too."

Rush and other members of the public will have more opportunity to have their say as the project evolves from a blank slate into concrete ideas. Another round of public meetings will take place this fall when a set of "reasonable" alternatives will be available. Early next year, another meeting will be planned to garner comment on a recommended alternative.

Those meetings will be in addition to regular meetings of a corridor working group composed of local, state and federal agencies that have or might have a stake in the project.

The meetings are part of an accelerated federally approved planning and environmental process designed to speed development of big projects but also ensure that relevant parties have their say and are informed about the the project.

The process is "trying to get everybody on board at once," Holder said at a briefing he gave last week to the Metroplan board of directors. Metroplan is the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas. Its board is composed of the region's mayors and county judges.

According to a corridor study time line, a study report and recommendation will be done by spring next year and then reviewed by the Federal Highway Administration. At that point a review of the project will commence under the National Environmental Policy Act. How involved that review will be isn't known yet, according to Holder.

Construction, which isn't set to begin until 2018, will also be accelerated under the design-build concept in which the project will be designed while it is being built. Typically, plans for a project are drawn up first and then a contract is awarded to the lowest bidder.

In the case of the I-30 project, contractors will be given a set of partial plans and priorities and asked what they can build that's within the budget, Holder told the Metroplan board. Whichever contractor says it can do the most will get the contract, he said.

Doing it this way can shorten the time it takes to construct by up to 18 months and save $20 million that would be lost to inflation, Holder said.

There also is a vision group on which a dozen people appointed by the mayors of Little Rock and North Little Rock and Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines will vet artistic features that will be incorporated into any columns or retaining walls that might be built.

Metro on 08/18/2014

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