2-lane Riverfront Drive on agenda in NLR
A proposal to reduce Riverfront Drive in North Little Rock from four lanes to two will slow traffic through the city’s downtown area while also accommodating a planned apartment complex and a potential hotel development on the old Smarthouse Way property just west of the Broadway bridge.
City Council members will consider three pieces of legislation at their 6 p.m. Monday meeting related to the proposal.
Resolutions propose converting Riverfront Drive to a two-lane minor arterial street between the Union Pacific Railroad bridge and Brother Paul Drive and for the city to sell 0.64 of an acre of right of way along the south side of the street from Smarthouse Way to just west of the Broadway bridge to allow on-street parking for the pending development.
The third piece of legislation is to amend the city’s master street plan to remove sections of Riverfront Drive as a principal arterial street.
The North Little Rock Public Building Authority sold the 5.8-acre Smarthouse Way riverfront site in February 2017 for $2.532 million to
Smarthouse Way LLC, a subsidiary of TerraForma LLC, a real estate development company in Maumelle.
TerraForma is leading the project along the Arkansas River to develop a 210-unit apartment complex, “with the majority having river views,” said Doug Meyer, a managing partner of the company. An architectural schematic of the project labels the complex as Vue on Riverfront.
The city legislation says reducing Riverfront Drive to two lanes “will facilitate development of properties along Riverfront Drive, provide additional parking for events in the downtown area, as well as reduce vehicle speed to make Riverfront Drive safer and more conducive [to] the downtown environment.”
The project developers “need the on-street parking for this particular development,” said Danny Bradley, the city’s chief of staff, referring to the coming apartment complex.
“It will also provide additional parking for large events downtown,” Bradley said.
The mixed-use development on the riverfront also places it close to Dickey-Stephens Park, which is on the east side of the Broadway bridge. North Little Rock’s Argenta District downtown, Verizon Arena and the pedestrian Junction Bridge that leads across the river to Little Rock’s River Market entertainment district are all less than a half-mile away.
“I said early on this is a work-and-play concept,” Meyer said. “Especially for millennials. They want to live close to where they work. This is within walking distance of Argenta and Dickey-Stephens Park and Verizon Arena. The new Broadway bridge has a real nice walking capability to cross the river.”
The City Council originally had agreed to an “option to buy” contract with a different group headed by J. Fletcher Hanson III in December 2014 that was extended three times until early 2017, when Smarthouse Way LLC bought the property.
“We bought it from the city,” Meyer said. “We’ve ordered the architectural work on the multifamily, so we should have final drawings within the next 60 to 90 days. We’re hoping to break ground before the end of the year.”
TerraForma’s website, terraformallc.com, has an artist’s rendering of an “Argenta Waterfront District” that shows three multistory buildings, with the tallest in the center. That rendering is outdated, Meyer said, because original plans that included an office building didn’t materialize. The company is still negotiating with a hotel group to build on the site, he said.
“We’re looking right now at multifamily and a hotel on the east end closest to the new Broadway bridge and looking at restaurants and possibly some food courttype thing, smaller restaurants with a place to sit and eat,” Meyer said.
“There’s a killer riverfront view right now from that side looking across to Little Rock,” he said. “It’s absolutely gorgeous. In the evening, it’s breathtaking.”
Converting Riverfront Drive to two lanes, and slowing traffic down, will not only benefit the planned apartment development but open up possibilities for riverfront activities and development, city Communications Director Nathan Hamilton said.
“Converting Riverfront Drive to two lanes will help spur development,” Hamilton said. “It will also help the riverfront as a tourist destination. Instead of people flying by on a four-lane Riverfront Drive, we want them to stop and enjoy it.”
Riverfront Drive, Bradley said, doesn’t have the traffic volume to necessitate four lanes. The average daily traffic count in 2017 at the Smarthouse Way site was 5,200 vehicles, compared with 13,000 on Broadway east of Main Street, according to state Department of Transportation figures.
Riverfront Drive was constructed in the mid-1980s as a four-lane road and was part of the state highway system until the city obtained it from the state early this year.
“As a city street, it’s better to have a slower speed limit and slow traffic down so we don’t have a speedway around town,” Bradley said. “We’ll have a street going through downtown.”
Last month, 12-year-old Aniyah Dilworth was killed and an 11-year-old boy was injured when two vehicles racing on Riverfront Drive crashed near Olive Street. North Little Rock police later filed charges of first-degree endangering the welfare of a minor against Michael Scales, 30, of Little Rock, and Brandon Rogers, 29, of North Little Rock.