Rolling out the red carpet for guests of the Clinton Presidential Library opening has been made easier for the city of Little Rock since some of the work was already planned and private donations and public grants were available to help pay for the work.
With few exceptions, city workers will have all preparations, big and small, wrapped up in time for the 27,000 visitors expected in town for Thursday’s opening.
The streets leading to the library look like an urban patchwork, a mismatch of dusty older streets and the fresh black asphalt of newly paved roads and filled potholes. Street repairs represent the most expensive of the great Clinton cleanup, but as Assistant City Manager Bob Turner pointed out, that work was going to be done regardless.
Downtown roads had been deteriorating before recent improvements.
Turner said, “To do it right, you need to repave your streets about every five years; however, it’s not unusual for cities to push that quite a bit longer.”
The last time the River Market or its surrounding areas saw street repairs was 1999.
The road work that has been done as far south as Ninth Street, as far west as Broadway, and all the way to President Clinton Avenue, Markham Street and the Interstate 30 bridge, would have taken place, library or not. That work is part of a three-year, $8 million road improvement project. The opening of the library only hastened the work.
“It just made sense that we would do it at this time,” Turner said. “We were going to have a lot of people.” Library officials are predicting about 300,000 visitors in the library’s first year.
Turner said the city would focus more on resurfacing residential streets next year. And as a whole, the project, which runs into 2006, is about 30 percent complete.
Some work on Third Street, however, is part of another project, the second phase of the River Rail trolley line, which is not expected to be complete until the end of next year.
A $1 million grant from the federal Economic Development Administration along with Little Rock, North Little Rock and county funds are helping to pay for work along Third Street, which wasn’t scheduled until next year. Turner said other street work in the area made it practical to do that work now.
Other street work includes laying white plastic to mark pedestrian crossing lanes, new street signs and 25 new street lights.
For added shine, city crews have spent evenings the last two weeks sweeping and power-washing the streets. Workers are also painting and patching sidewalk benches, repainting the once graffiti-laden underside of the I-30 bridge and cleaning light poles. To keep the streets clean and free of litter, the city dished out $18,000 for 60 new street trash cans designed to last seven years, Turner said.
According to Turner and Guy Lowes, director of Public Works, much of this work won’t cost taxpayers additional money. Lowes calls it “just things that needed to be done,” he said.
And as for the street crews, Turner said, “If they weren’t cleaning there, then they would be doing the same thing in another city park.”
Some of the crews have been working long days and weekends, which will cost the city overtime wages. And city officials aren’t sure yet how much the extra man-hours will cost.
Help From Friends
Smaller projects dotting the roads that lead to the library received help from private donors and public grants.
On the corner of President Clinton Avenue and Sherman Street, in an area no bigger than the infield of a baseball diamond, newly planted trees stand barely six feet tall and the lines between the recently laid rectangles of sod are still visible.
Called Kitty Corner, this space was made possible by a 2002 Urban Forestry Grant and, most importantly, the greenspace’s namesake, Kitty Lane, who applied for the grant.
River Market manager Shannon Light said the grant wasn’t worth more than a couple thousand dollars, but the city and the Parks and Recreation Department also chipped in.
“People need a place sometimes to stop and regroup,” Light said.
Just east of Kitty Corner, along President Clinton Avenue and under the Interstate 30 bridge, 3,500 hand-painted tiles brighten visitors’ last glimpse of the city before entering the library’s park. Light calls it “the big ta-da” before the entrance.
The tiles, about 6 inches square, were painted by Little Rock-area students, glazed by seniors at the city’s Stephens Recreation Center and paid for by private donations. Complimenting the tiles are more multidimensional art pieces in the Presidential Park and surrounding areas. Six bronze sculptures are scattered around the library’s entrance, behind the Museum Center, in Riverfest Plaza and in Riverfront Park.
A large pig will rest by the River Market fountain and mark the beginning of a trail of sculptures, some as wide as 10 feet and as high as 9 feet, which includes a sculpture of a dancing woman, underground railroad engineer Harriet Tubman, children climbing a tree, anglers and an eagle.
City Director Dean Kumpuris headed the effort to raise $300,000 in private donations for the sculptures.
North Little Rock Pitches In
Across the river in North Little Rock there has also been plenty of touching up, but not necessarily with the sole aim of impressing just this week’s visitors.
Mayor Patrick Henry Hays said his city has been orchestrating drastic improvements and developments to its riverfront downtown for years, and that the influx of visitors expected on the north shore will just be an added opportunity for North Little Rock to “put its best foot forward.”
“We’re pretty all the time,” Hays said. “North Little Rock is knee-deep in revitalizing our riverfront and downtown to offer visitors and residents of central Arkansas a good reason to make a visit to the north side.”
Hays said the city didn’t have any projects in the works with completion deadlines solely for this week, but city officials did make the decision to move its prized World War II submarine, the USS Razorback, a stone’s throw upriver so it will be more visible to visitors at the Clinton Presidential Library.
Additionally, North Little Rock is offering chunks of city property along the riverfront for additional parking and has also lent a spot on the north shore for the launch of what is expected to be the state’s largest-ever fireworks display at 9 p.m. on Wednesday.
Hays, still basking in the glow of his city’s recent announcement of building a $25 million minor-league ballpark at the base of the Broadway Bridge, jokingly said, “It sure would’ve been nice to have a first-class baseball stadium lit up [this] week.”
(Nate Hinkel contributed to this report.)
