City and Rock Region Metro officials acted quickly in separate special meetings Monday to remove an impediment to a combination of projects waiting to break ground in downtown North Little Rock.
A 2002 granting of an exclusive easement near Sixth and Main streets by North Little Rock to Central Arkansas Transit Authority, now Rock Region Metro, needed amending to become a non-exclusive easement to open up three parcels surrounding the Metro streetcar maintenance barn for adjoining developments.
By a 6-0 vote, the North Little Rock City Council approved authorizing Mayor Joe Smith to execute the amendment. The Rock Region Metro board of directors, meeting one hour later, also voted 6-0 to authorize new Executive Director Charles Frazier to do the same.
The exclusive easement provision was deterring development of an extension of Sixth Street to connect Main and Magnolia streets, as well as planned projects from Fifth and Main north to Bishop Lindsey Avenue, also known as Seventh Street, and behind the trolley barn. City officials had previously estimated the projects would be underway by now.
The city's planned Argenta Plaza between Fifth and Sixth streets would touch part of the easement in question, while the $10 million First Orion Building to be built directly behind the plaza would also be affected. First Orion develops and sells software for cellphones.
There are also plans for a privately owned, mixed-use building with a restaurant and residences on the north side of the new Sixth Street extension, adjacent to the new city plaza, as well as a pair of parking lots in front of and behind the trolley barn.
All delays should be erased with the change to the easement agreement, Smith said. The mayor told his council that he spoke with Charles Morgan, chief executive officer for First Orion, before the council meeting, to assure him all could move forward.
"They want to break ground next week," Smith said.
The exclusive agreement granted Rock Region Metro sole rights to use those parcels and the ability to prevent others from their use.
"I don't think we would have approved it in 2002 if we'd known [its future effect]," Smith told council members in its three-minute-long meeting. "I guess we weren't thinking 15 years in advance."
The change will "not have any impact" on Rock Region Metro streetcars moving in and out of the trolley barn, Jess Sweere, attorney for Rock Region Metro, told the transit board.
Smith, who attended the Rock Region Metro meeting along with North Little Rock City Attorney Amy Fields, said that construction work would require the moving of one pole that helps to power the electric streetcars, but that the expense "will come out of our [the city's] pocket." Smith said after the meeting that he didn't yet have a cost of that pole realignment.
Along with the recent opening of the first units of the Thrive Argenta apartments nearby, the First Orion headquarters, the public plaza and other developments are expected to bring hundreds of more residents, workers and visitors into the city's downtown and close by the trolley barn and its streetcar stop near Main and Bishop Lindsey Avenue.
"We're going to make a project you're going to be proud of," Smith told the Rock Region Metro directors.
Metro on 07/03/2018