An easement granted 16 years ago by the city of North Little Rock for the benefit of Rock Region Metro's streetcars must be amended before work can begin on the First Orion Building and the public Argenta Plaza that will front Main Street in the city's downtown, Mayor Joe Smith said.
Smith has called a special meeting of the North Little Rock City Council for 10 a.m. today to vote on authorizing an amendment to the 2002 agreement to change the grant of an "exclusive" easement for the Rock Region trolley maintenance barn's use to a "non-exclusive" easement.
The Rock Region Metro board of directors has set a special meeting for 11 a.m. today to consider altering the agreement.
The $10 million headquarters for First Orion, a company that develops and sells software for cellphones, will be directly behind the $4 million city plaza planned for the east side of Main Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. Both projects had been expected by city officials to be underway by now.
The City Council agreed in May to insert an addition to Sixth Street that will connect Magnolia and Main streets. The extension will pass along the northern side of the planned plaza and help provide access to the plaza, First Orion and other adjacent projects.
The council also voted at the same May meeting to create a pair of parking lots: one in front of the trolley barn and the other behind the planned First Orion building. Parts of both parking lots will be next to the new Sixth Street extension.
"It can't be an exclusive easement, because we've got to touch it from the other side," Smith said last week. "Both the First Orion building and the plaza have got to be able to touch that easement."
In reviewing property documents and other materials, officials found that the city had granted the exclusive easement to Central Arkansas Transit Authority, now Rock Region Metro, along where the Sixth Street extension is to be, preventing any other use there, City Attorney Amy Fields said.
"When looking at [the 2002 deed], it said it is an exclusive easement for the purpose of vehicular ingress and egress for the trolleys," Fields said. "They're the only ones who can use it, and they can exclude others from using it.
"Part of [the easement] overlaps a small portion of one of the subsidiary parking lots closer to the trolley barn," Fields said. "So we can't give First Orion a non-exclusive easement to something when we have already given an exclusive easement to someone else as well. It certainly creates an impediment to our ability to build out Sixth Street."
Rock Region Metro directors will be asked to approve an amendment to "change the easement from 'exclusive' to 'non-exclusive,' at Metro staff members' recommendation," said Becca Green, the agency's director of public engagement.
Smith said he didn't anticipate any problems in amending the agreement.
"It should take us two minutes," he said of Monday's special council meeting.
Smith said last week that the easement language has been one of "about five" legal obstacles involving property lines to come up recently that have helped to slow the creation of the plaza he has pushed for and the First Orion project announced in November.
Work on the plaza can't start until the much larger First Orion project begins construction, Smith has said.
Along with the plaza and First Orion, new apartment units are set to be open this week, and a three-story office building and a two-story mixed-use building containing a restaurant and residential units are also in the works, all within walking distance of the trolley barn and a streetcar boarding stop at Main and Bishop Lindsey Avenue (Seventh Street).
"The Metro team is excited to see the development along Main Street move forward, and we look forward to serving the additional employees and neighbors the projects will bring to downtown," Green said in an email.
Metro on 07/02/2018