Using 11 school buses to simulate walls, North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith said Monday he wanted to help residents and visitors see his plans to create a downtown plaza on Main Street that would be flanked by stores, restaurants, offices and residences.
The buses, loaned by the North Little Rock School District during Christmas break, were lined up Monday to provide a "sense of space" for the downtown plaza, envisioned by Smith as a mini version of Fort Worth's popular Sundance Square Plaza.
Smith invited City Council members, architects and others to take a first look with him Monday afternoon. Leaving the buses in place between Fifth and Sixth streets for two weeks will let others come look and give input.
"I haven't seen a vibrant downtown that didn't have a place of interest for people to come," Smith said to five aldermen and others while standing near the center of the city-owned vacant lot. "The main thing is I wanted y'all to think about it. We'll leave it up for two weeks. People will be able to walk around it, step it off. Is the plaza big enough? Then let me continue to work with developers."
Smith said he's heard interest from developers, but no project has been proposed.
"This place is for everybody," Smith said during an interview earlier Monday. "I want everybody to see it and put their two cents in. We have one chance to get it right. I'd rather take the time to do our homework and get it right."
The 0.66-acre site at 510 Main St. is between the River Rail Trolley Barn and the North Little Rock Heritage Center, formerly the North Little Rock History Commission building. The city acquired the land in December 2012 as part of a property exchange involving the former Checkmate Club property at Fourth and Poplar streets that the city purchased in 2010.
"I wonder what's going to go in the plaza," Alderman Charlie Hight said while looking over the site. "Right now it's a big vision, a big dream. But we'll never have a plaza if we don't start dreaming about it."
Smith began working this spring toward turning the empty lot into a place where people can eat, shop, listen to live music, bring their children or just gather on their own to relax. The influence came from looking at similar spaces in other downtowns until he visited the 55,000-square-foot Sundance Square Plaza in Fort Worth, about twice the size of North Little Rock's site. The Fort Worth plaza is within a 35-block shopping and entertainment district that draws more than 10 million people per year, according to sundancesquare.com.
"I think it could be something similar to Sundance Square, on a smaller scale," Smith said, mentioning having a mural on the north side of the Heritage Center and a water feature that could be turned off to allow tables and chairs to be set up for events.
Smith was part of a mayors' conference on community design held recently in Bentonville, and he said he was offered ideas there to help visualize the plaza's development.
"I'm a visual guy," Smith said. "I need to see where these [buildings] would go. My big concerns are, one, closing in the plaza, and, two, is it big enough? It was suggested to build temporary walls, but I didn't have the manpower or the money to do that."
Smith asked city Special Projects Director Jim Billings to inquire if the city could rent shipping crates large enough to simulate walls. Billings said that when he found that the cost would be about $70,000 for 12, plus the cost for shipping and staging the crates, he suggested using school buses instead.
One row of six buses sits along the back side of the plaza site, simulating a possible three-story building of retail shops, offices or residences. The rest sit on the lot's north side, simulating other office space or shops, along with a restaurant that would include outdoor dining.
"I think it would be a lot more attractive for additional groups to want to come here and have an event," said Donna Hardcastle, executive director of the Argenta Arts Foundation, which manages the plaza site for the city. "To have a year-round space where people can come to, eat at a restaurant and enjoy downtown is too good of an opportunity to miss."
Metro on 12/22/2015