The city of Little Rock held a grand opening on Sept. 14 for the completed sections of the Creative Corridor Low Impact Development along Main Street downtown, where newly finished improvements in the 500 block of Main were open to the public.
The event, held at Arkansas Repertory Theatre, featured remarks from Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, along with Ron Curry, Region 6 administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Randy Young, Arkansas Natural Resources Commission executive director; and, Steve Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, a program of the UA Fay Jones School of Architecture.
Stodola said the project, which has garnered 10 national and international design awards, is now at the end of Phase I, which was made possible through about $100 million in private and public investment, including $900,000 from the EPA.
He said plans call for development to continue along main street into Southside Main Street, comprising phases II and III.
“Little Rock is truly unique,” Curry of the EPA said at the event. “I point to Little Rock as a model of ways communities work together to get things done.”
Luoni said the goal of the Creative Corridor is to rethink Main Street as a sense of place downtown, where the largest land use remains surface parking. Improvements include sustainable landscaping and streetscaping, biowales, porous pavers, rain gardens and biodiverse vegetation, he said.
He said three main problems — marketing, policy and design — had to be tackled to begin the project.
“We said, ‘What if the street was a place,'” Luoni said. “‘What if the street was an ecological asset, a biological filter.'”
The Creative Corridor is a mixed-use development in downtown Little Rock aiming to restore vitality to the area by creating an arts district. So far, improvements have been made along four blocks of Main Street — from the 100 block to the 500 block.
While Cranford Co. has already moved into its space at the 500 block, arts organizations — Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Arkansas and Matt McLeod Fine Art — will also call the space home, but have not officially moved into their spaces.
Below is a gallery of photos from the 500 block of Main Street in downtown Little Rock: