LR site has plan for living quarters

Developer seeks Boyle rezoning

NOEL OMAN Plans to redevelop the Boyle Building on Main Street in downtown Little Rock, stalled for three years, now envision the second skyscraper built in the city including a 96-unit apartment complex rather than just simply a hotel.

Jacob Chi, managing member of the Chi Hotel Group, disclosed the change in plans in a request to city planning officials earlier this month to rezone the 12-story building at 500 S. Main St. to allow uses to “include multi-family living units at a density higher than allowed” under existing zoning restrictions.

“We believe that the requested zoning changes would … enhance the adjacent areas and would provide for increased property values in the areas close in proximity to this location,” Chi said in a letter accompanying an application to rezone the property.

The renewed activity is a sign to some that the city’s 5-year-old plan to develop an arts corridor along Main has come out of hibernation.

“We believe that completing a planned adaptive reuse project in the Boyle Building would further create progress towards the City of Little Rock’s goal of successfully revitalizing Main Street as the Creative Corridor,” Chi wrote.

Gabe Holmstrom, executive director of the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, said he is hopeful.

“The redevelopment of the Boyle Building at the

● corner of Capitol and Main will be a significant marker of our progress in Downtown Little Rock,” he said in an email. “That said, this is another procedural step in a lengthy planning process, and we will be following the progress.”

The next step is approval from the Little Rock Planning Commission. Chi’s rezoning request is on the commission’s agenda for its July 20 meeting.

Assuming the commission grants the request, it will go before the Little Rock Board of Directors on Aug. 15 at the earliest or possibly on Sept. 5, said Donna James, subdivision administrator for the city’s planning and development department.

Chi’s request comes at the same time a property next door is back on the market. The MM Cohn Building at 510 S. Main St. carries a $3.1 million

price tag. Flake and Kelley Commercial said offers are being taken through June 30.

Main Street Lofts LLC sold the five-story building to Deep Creek LR LLC, an Arizona developer, for more than $2.1 million in April, according to Pulaski County real estate transactions.

Chi didn’t return a telephone call on Monday afternoon, but he said in the letter that the Boyle Building would be “repurposed and revitalized in a single phase.”

“Planned uses of the Boyle Building will include hotel, offices, commercial tenants on the ground floor of the structure and up to 96 apartments,” Chi’s letter said.

The Boyle Building was built in 1909 as an 11-story property. The 12th story was added in the 1940s. The 10-story Pyramid Building at 221 W. Second St., built in 1907 as the Southern Trust Building, was the first tall building in Little Rock.