A few hours after the Little Rock Police Department officially opened its new 12th Street station to the public, longtime neighborhood resident Joyce Johnson couldn't stop smiling.
"I'm just loving this," said Johnson, who moved into her home on West 11th Street in 1985. "I've seen this neighborhood at its worst. It was, for a while, like we were almost forgotten. Like things were just left to go whichever way the wind blew."
Johnson was one of several hundred residents, police officers and city officials to attend the official opening of the long-promised station, which grew out of both the 12th Street Revitalization Project and the passage of a 2011 citywide, 1 percent sales tax for capital improvements and operating budgets.
The new station, located at 3917 W. 12th St., represents expanded neighborhood policing in west Little Rock, especially south of Interstate 630, long an area of concentrated crime, City Manager Bruce Moore said.
"I'm a firm believer that presence serves as a deterrent," Moore said.
"Ten years ago, Chief Thomas drew a circle around this area and said this is where we needed additional presence," he said, referring to former Police Chief Stuart Thomas, who retired in June.
The 44,000-square-foot facility was originally budgeted at about $11.9 million, but by June 2013, contract revisions had increased the cost to $12.5 million, according to previous Democrat-Gazette reports.
The increase was in part due to repeated changes in the planned size and scope for the station, but Moore said Thursday that "whenever you get into a building like this, there's some contingencies that you just don't envision."
Ken Richardson, city director for Ward 2, said he had argued long and hard with other Little Rock administrators to bring the station to his ward.
"They were planning to have a midtown police substation, but once I started the 12th Street Revitalization Project, we really looked at it being more than just a substation," Richardson said. "We did lobby hard as part of our 12th Street work."
Mayor Mark Stodola said that although city officials had originally considered renovating an existing, abandoned structure in the area, pushback from Richardson and other local administrators gradually swayed him toward construction of an entirely new facility.
"I got a real education about that, as we evolved through that," Stodola said, glancing at Richardson, who feigned boxing gestures. Richardson later referred to the argument as a "steel-cage death match" with Stodola.
While the Police Department is currently the only occupant in the new station, city administrators plan to lease large portions of the building to private-sector businesses, Moore and Richardson said. Although no leasing agreements have been signed, several city officials said Thursday that businesses including banks, credit unions, grocery stores and pharmacies would be welcome additions to the neighborhood.
Police Chief Kenton Buckner said the facility itself is secondary in importance to the change he and other city administrators hope to effect.
"When we look back at this 10 years from now, we won't be talking about the building when we're trying to determine whether or not it was successful," Buckner said. "If this day is to mean anything in our history, it will be because the Police Department and the citizens that occupy this area have worked together to solve long-term problems that have gone on too long in this area."
Buckner said that although some police personnel are being reallocated from the department's North Main Street station, no additional officers were being hired at present.
Metro on 09/26/2014