LR rethinks car-charging station
Reversal puts plug-in site off I-630 exit on track to open in ’18
An electric-car charging station planned for an Interstate 630 exit gained local approval Wednesday after Little Rock city staff members reversed their position, putting the project on course to open next year.
Jeff Franklin of Little Rock wants to build the solar-covered charging station outside his planned farm-to-table restaurant on a now-grassy lot at the South Woodrow Street exit. The station would include three quickcharge plug-ins, a service scarce in Arkansas.
Franklin’s development will be among the first since the passage of a new law this year that allows people to sell electricity as vehicle fuel without being forced to qualify as a utility with the Public Service Commission. But Franklin first had to secure a change in local land-use rules for the property.
The Little Rock Board of Directors by a 9-0 vote approved a zoning change after City Manager Bruce Moore said the city’s Planning and Development Department looked again at the proposal and decided to support it. City Director Capi Peck was absent.
The matter had split staff members and the Planning Commission, which voted 10-1 to support the change after Danielle Ray, president of the Capitol View-Stifft Station Neighborhood Association, argued in favor of the development.
Little Rock’s Planning and Development Department initially recommended the city board deny Franklin’s proposal because the west side of South Woodrow Street has been historically zoned for residential use.
Moore said he personally visited the site and spoke with former Planning Director Tony Bozynski — who retired at the end of the month — and staff members about reversing the decision.
Moore said the zoning change would not mark a huge departure from how South Woodrow is used at that spot, particularly when considering that areas south of the interstate are for commercial purposes.
Across the state, 443 vehicles are registered as fully electric powered, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration said last week. An additional 16,731 are registered as gas-electric hybrids, but it’s not clear how many of them require plugins to obtain their charges, the spokesman said.
Central Arkansas has 16 charging stations, not including home plug-ins, according to PlugShare, a company that maintains a map-based database of such stations.
Only one, a Tesla Supercharger at the Outlet Mall of Little Rock, provides the type of quick charge that Franklin proposes, which provides more than 150 miles’ worth of electricity in a half hour.
Tesla opened its station shortly after Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed Act 285 of 2017, which exempted car-charging stations from the definition of a utility as set by a 1935 law. A fast-charge station also has opened in Rogers, according to PlugShare.
Because Arkansas previously lacked such stations, it represented a so-called doughnut hole to the national network of fast-charge stations, leading long-distance drivers to bypass the state, said state Rep. Warwick Sabin, D-Little Rock, who co-sponsored the legislation.
Other stations offered a free, but slower, charge to avoid the law requiring businesses to qualify as a utility with the Public Service Commission, Sabin said.
Franklin said he is working on securing funding for the estimated $750,000 project, and he hopes to open the station by September 2018.