Future envisioned for Ole Main High

Center of Excellence, offices pushed

After weeks of public forums, officials have a plan to turn the vacant Ole Main High School building into the new home of North Little Rock School District’s Center of Excellence and its administration office.

Now, officials said, they can begin narrowing down further details.

The proximity of the vacant Ole Main to North Little Rock’s current high school at 101 W. 22nd St. puts limitations on what can be done with the building. Officials have said it can’t be used as apartments, criminal law offices, or an entertainment venue with alcohol.

Task force member Paula

Lively also noted that Ole Main belongs to the school district. That means the building will have limited parking, limited access to the general public, and smoking and drinking will be banned within the facility.

The Ole Main Task Force, created in 2019, has been gathering community input to create a list of recommendations on ways to preserve Ole Main, which will be presented to the North Little Rock Board of Education and the school district. Ole Main was built in 1928 but has stood empty since May 2016.

Lively said using the old high school building as a place for the Center of Excellence and the district’s administra

tion building are the two priorities right now.

Dustin Barnes, school district spokesman, said the Center of Excellence is currently housed at the high school. It is a conversion charter that offers students specialized pathways to graduation that include medical professions, manufacturing

and engineering.

Lively said the planned administration offices in the Ole Main building would occupy only about 25,000 square feet of the 40,000-square-foot building, leaving space for additional use.

Four community input meetings have been held over the past two months during which members of the task force have collected ideas on what to do with the extra

space.

“We have been pleasantly surprised with the turnout and the responses,” Lively said. “What we know is that the community is very passionate about the building.”

Lively said suggestions include an educational facility, classrooms for night classes and a local gathering place.

“We are excited to see what they come up with, but now we got to see what is viable,”

she said.

The task force won’t take budget concerns into consideration when it comes to ideas for the building, Lively said. She said this concept wasn’t easy for people to understand at some of the forums.

“It took almost an entire meeting time to get the point through that the idea of this was playtime, not taxes,” she said. “The challenge was keeping people focused.”

Robert Birch, director of Workforce Development and Education for North Little Rock, previously said the school district knows how much it will cost to update the building and that money has been set aside.

“Taxpayers will get to vote if a new tax is recommended,” Birch said.

Lively said she hopes to hold a task force meeting this week to discuss the next process

and to look at what has been presented.

“Once we narrow it down, we will tell the public the ones we picked and explain why we disqualified the others,” she said. “We want to be transparent in this process.”

There is one more community input meeting to come, but Lively said the date is unknown after it was postponed Thursday because of the concern about covid-19.