While apartment developments have been sprouting in the Little Rock area and elsewhere, they still are apartments, even the ones that are marketed as upscale or luxury.
In apartments, people live either above a tenant or below. Parking typically isn’t reserved or covered unless tenants pay extra.
In other words, it’s hard to call an apartment truly home.
Two longtime developers say they believe they have hit on a concept that builds on the trend of renting rather than owning living accommodations but still a place that renters can call home.
Or as Bob Francis and Russ Huckaby like to say, “home without the hassle.”
“People are sick and tired of living in apartments,” Francis said. “They want options. We give them a lot of options they don’t have now.”
He and Huckaby are putting their theory to the test at a 38-acre development going up alongside the sprawling retail and entertainment district anchored by Bass Pro Shops at the Interstate 430/ Interstate 30 interchange in Little Rock.
Called Village at The Gateway, residents will begin next month moving into the leased one- and twostory town homes off Vimy Ridge Road almost as fast as Big Rock Resort Residential Communities can build them.
The first phase was limited to 56 units with four more eventually added. All are leased as well as 10 more, prompting developers Francis and Huckaby to begin the second of what eventually will be seven phases.
Soon to be added is a three-story clubhouse with a resort-style pool that includes a swim-up bar, waterfall and shallow sunbathing area. Clubhouse amenities include a 24-hour fitness center, cyber cafe, fireside lounges and a poolside kitchen and grill.
The development also will include a green space with a dog park.
Francis and Huckaby say their town homes — which are like duplexes in that they share a firewall — will be a cut above as well. Four floor plans are available in one, two and three bedrooms. They feature vaulted ceilings, granite countertops, soft-close cabinet doors and energy-efficient LED lights, double-pane windows and heating/cooling units.
All include single or double-space garages and an antenna that provides 30 free television channels. A tower will beam free broadband service up to 15 megabytes per second, good enough for Web-browsing and some downloading. Faster service will be available for a monthly fee, depending on the speed.
The residents pay only for electricity. Water, natural gas, wasterwater, trash pickup and pest control are included in the monthly rent, which begins at $1,049 for a one-bedroom unit.
All that sounded perfect to Margaret Miller, a 23-yearold Dallas native fresh out of nursing school with a new job at Arkansas Heart Hospital.
Like many of the early tenants, Miller was attracted to the development by word of mouth. She said she heard about the development from someone in her nursing clinicals. Miller said she was sold even though when she went to see about leasing a onebedroom town home several weeks ago, all she saw was “dirt.”
“It’s basically an all-inclusive rent and cheaper than I’m paying for a one-bedroom apartment in west Little Rock,” she said. “Mine is not anywhere near as nice.”
She expects to move in by the end of June and noted that it is just 6 miles down Interstate 430 from Arkansas Heart Hospital.
Speaking of word of mouth, she persuaded two of her fellow nursing-school graduates to move to the development. The two will share a two-bedroom unit, Miller said.
Village at the Gateway is at least the fourth time someone has tried to develop the properties since 2005. Initially envisioned as a subdivision, efforts in 2005 and 2008 succumbed to the recession.
The property eventually found itself on the asset sheets of First Community Bank of Batesville. Even the state’s ninth-largest bank with $1.2 billion in assets could not make the numbers work for the property as a subdivision.
A fortuitous conversation between Dale Cole, First Community’s chairman and chief executive officer, and Francis led to Francis and Huckaby teaming up to try to develop the property.
“Russell is the magician,” said Francis, whose expertise is finance. “He understands how to put these kind of things together. We began at that point back and forth, beating each other up, until we came up with a product that will be unique and accomplish the density that was necessary out here to make the financial part of it work for the bank as well as for us.”
When the dust eventually settles on the development, it will represent a $40 million investment. It just doesn’t have to go in all at once, which is why Cole liked the proposal.
“We saw the potential through Bob Francis and Russ Huckaby,” Cole said. “We thought the project could be successful. I am a very conservative banker so I look at this and say if it can’t work as a lease project, then I know I can sell those duplexes.
“It is unique in design because you look at it you don’t see the front doors. It doesn’t look like a typical duplex. It looks like a singlefamily home. The marriage of apartment amenities with an outstanding clubhouse and swimming pool, privacy of a single-family home or duplex, I thought it would be successful.”
But Cole said Francis and Huckaby and the expertise they brought to the table were key as was the ability to invest in the development gradually, instead of up front.
“Russ and Bob are just the perfect team to make this happen,” he said. “I said, ‘Let’s do the first 16 units. Once you get those leased, we’ll do another 16 and another 16” and lo and behold, they’re up to 70 units already. So we’re going into the second phase as soon as they can get it built.”
Francis agreed.
“That’s the difference between this and an apartment,” he said. “You go build an apartment complex, you’re going to build 290 units before you lease the first one. You’ve got $40 million or $50 million in it, where we can phase it in, seven phases, $6 million per phase for round numbers.”
Francis and Huckaby believe Village at the Gateway can be a model for similar developments in other parts of the United States.
“The cost of your land, cost of construction, cost of rental income — we’ve already modeled,” Francis said. “We look at any market and see what our product will do in that market right now.
“What we’ve been very good about is we’ve formed national contracts on all our purchases so we can go wherever we want to go. We can control our costs. It’s just labor costs in that market, land costs and rents.”
In other words, why stop in Little Rock.
“For us to be successful for what we’re doing and where it is is a statement in and of itself.” Francis said. “Worst case is the way we’ve done it, we could protect it. But this is a model, a franchise.”