NLR visitor hub gets GPS update
Aim is to help tourists navigate to Burns Park location
Future seekers of the North Little Rock Visitors Center in Burns Park will be able to look up Eldor Johnson Drive on their GPS and city maps to help guide them.
The visitors center, inside the North Little Rock Visitors Bureau at 1 Eldor Johnson Drive, distributes brochures, coupons and other information about North Little Rock and its attractions, hotels and restaurants.
The center had 15,093 visitors in 2014, even with the inner-park street missing from GPS directions, sometimes causing confusion to tourists and even city residents, said Bob Major, the bureau’s executive director.
The city’s Community Planning Department can solve the problem by asking the Pulaski Area Geographic Information System (PAGIS) to add the roadway in its next update. PAGIS maintains geographic information system data for seven partner agencies, which includes the city of North Little Rock.
“We’ll ask PAGIS to show it on the map,” Planning Director Robert Voyles said. “I think that’s going to work. It’s still Parks property, but it has a legitimate public reason to show it on a map. We’ll just ask them to show it.”
The street, a city Parks Department-maintained driveway that dead-ends at the park’s Eldor Johnson Pavilion, is believed by city Parks administrators to have existed for more than 50 years. It isn’t a designated city street and its name doesn’t show up on printed city maps or online maps such as Google Maps, though names of other roadways inside the 1,700-acre Burns Park are shown.
The center is located left off Military Drive when coming off Interstate 40’s Exit 150. There are also signs for the visitors center on I-40.
Major brought up the problem at an Advertising and Promotion Commission meeting two weeks ago when he told how he couldn’t find the visitors center’s street on GPS while helping give directions to a caller. The Commission manages the Visitors Bureau. An article about Major’s concerns was published last week in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
“That’s one of the main things, having the GPS location data for people to be able to find us,” Major said. “A lot of times we’ll be talking to people from outside of this area that are going to be in town and they want to stop by and get some information. When we give the address, it’s not there on their GPS for them.
“My concern was when we print 40,000 copies of one brochure and 50,000 of another brochure and we list this address, it needs to be in GPS,” Major said.
City Aldermen Linda Robinson and Charlie Hight, both A&P Commissioners, had said they would sponsor
legislation to the City Council to dedicate the street. Voyles said that because it’s already inside a city park, legislation isn’t a required remedy.
“It’s city property,” Voyles said. “Normally streets happen by plats. This is inside of a park. It’s really kind of a driveway. But if someone wants to call it a specific name, that’s fine. It’s been up there a long time.
“I didn’t think this was much of an issue,” he added.
Major said it isn’t just out-of-town tourists who sometimes have a problem finding the Visitors Center. A restaurant promotion tied to free tickets to a University of Arkansas at Little Rock basketball game has resulted in some residents having to ask directions to the Visitors Center to pick up their tickets, he said.
“Surprisingly, a lot of local people don’t know where we are,” Major said. “It just takes a little bit more time to give directions by phone. A lot of people now have GPS in their car. I just felt like it was really important to have this street in the system. Now when people eventually update their GPS, it will start appearing.
“I appreciate Robert Voyles and [City Planner] Wade Dunlap over there for making this happen,” he added. “It may be a unique situation, but it’s one where we were able to work together to accomplish a solution.”
The street is named for Eldor Johnson, who was the city’s mayor for one term, 1947-1949. Johnson was instrumental in acquiring 878 acres for the city, land that helped form Burns Park, according to Cary Bradburn, a historian at the North Little Rock History Commission.