The Broadway Bridge has been closed while police cope with unconfirmed reports about a potential bridge jumper.

Meanwhile, want to get an idea of what the future holds when the bridge is closed for two years for replacement? You could see it today. Gridlock. Parking lots along side streets and general traffic chaos. Hell on Broadway.

UPDATE: Channel 7 reports that the bridge has reopened and rescue workers reached whoever prompted the closure. He was taken from the bridge without further incident.

• Cheree Franco
• Stan Dimitrov, Chair of the Safety Committee for Downtown Little Rock Partnership

Today the Downtown Partnership and the City of Little Rock held a press conference to announce a new pedestrian and bike safety campaign. According to Bryan Day, assistant city manager, the campaign is three-prong. There'll be a focus on education and awareness, which the Downtown Partnership will spearhead via their newsletter and Facebook. Additionally, police plan to crack down on downtown traffic violations. Running red lights and turning right on red or left on green cause the most pedestrian and cyclist accidents. The traffic engineering department will work to identify and address the most problematic intersections, with increased signage and longer red lights. Pedestrians have already been banned from the crosswalk on Broadway at City Hall during weekday work hours.

According to a analysis published by in January 2012 by Metroplan, Pulaski County had one cyclist death and nine pedestrian deaths in 2011, including an Entergy employee who was hit by a CAT bus crossing Louisiana at Capital. The study identified a dozen intersections with the highest crash incidents. Markham and LaHarpe tops the list at nine collisions, followed by Sixth and Broadway with eight collisions.

Fred Woodward of eStem Charter Schools was there to remind everyone of the 1,500 high school students strolling around downtown, to and from school and to restaurants, often distracted by their pals and not paying attention to traffic or signals. James Jones, the regional customer service manager from Entergy, was there to remind everyone that walking to work can be lethal. Max has given y'all his thoughts on this matter in a previous post.

The take-home message from today's event: texting, GPS systems, fiddling with your iPod, fixing your hair and eating your cheeseburger are dangerous. As Sgt. Cassandra Davis put it, "It only takes a second for something bad to happen. We don't want to live the rest of our lives regretting."

Members of the MacArthur Park Group are trying to spur interest in using MacArthur Park funds generated by the new Little Rock sales tax to create a new off-leash dog area.

According to Humane Society statistics, Little Rock is home to 50,000 dogs and only one off-leash dog park (Paws at Murray Park). But the MacArthur dog park is still in the early planning stages. According to Keith Canfield, the mayor-appointed Ward I representative on the Animal Services Advisory Board, the MacArthur Park Group is still trying to determine if there is enough interest to make a dog park top priority among MacArthur Park improvements.

There's a public organizational meeting Saturday, March 31 at 2 p.m. on the second floor of the MacArthur Park Museum to discuss the budget and overall concept and assign volunteer committees. Tentative plans include covered areas, fountains and doggie wading pools and even free wi-fi, but the amenities are subject to budget constraints. The park is slated to nestle in the angle of I-30 and I-630, along the park's western corridor.

Formed in 2006, MacArthur Park Group is a volunteer steering committee that works with the city's Parks and Recreation Department and the Downtown Partnership to raise money for MacArthur Park improvements. Three years ago, the group had a Minneapolis design firm asses MacArthur Park and draw up award-winning plans that now guide the group's projects. The dog park is among a three-part focus that also includes enhanced playgrounds and refurbishing a multi-court space used for soccer games and bike polo. Canfield said they're focusing on the dog park first because "it's relatively low cost and quick construction." The Group's goal is to begin work on the dog park sometime in 2012.

• OK WITH VETS: Former Mayor Jim Dailey

Of course it won't. A $400,000 rehab to create $18-a-square-foot medical/counseling office space across the street from a problem liquor store and long-defunct after-hours club is not a bad thing.

I suspect that Dailey and Priest are taking the long view missing in Mayor Mark Stodola and U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin's pitched resistance to accommodating veterans at this convenient place. Only a prolonged city legal battle — waged on technicalities invented by the city attorney's office — seems likely to stop the project now. It is far better to embrace it than to continue to fight and decry it as the ruination of Main Street. It's not only bad for the city's lacklustre image on serving the needy. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy for Main Street if city leaders continue to broadcast how terrible its occupants are.

Mayor Stodola's current spin — that this is purely a land-use issue, not about the clientele — is only a deflection from his and Griffin's core message: Mostly decrepit Main Street is too good for the American war veterans served by this facility. The land use issue isn't complicated. Such facilities are currently allowed by right under the zoning code. They'd still be allowed — after a hearing — under the tortured ordinance Stodola has tried to draw up to continue his five-year effort to push the VA (and other welfare agencies) out of downtown. There have been multiple hearings and private meetings on this facility. The VA has answered question after question. Neighbors have repeatedly expressed concerns. Given all that has transpired and with their reputation on the line, it is hard to imagine the VA doing anything but going the extra mile in making their clinic work properly.

How about let's simplify this? Let's present a resolution of support/opposition to the City Board. Let's short-circuit the talk about land-use ordinances, building permits and the other legal artifices dreamed up as proxies for the real issue. Do City Board members and our representatives in Congress think Main Street is too good for a veterans clinic or not? Call the roll.

PS — I want to pass along a note I got from the mayor after I noted he erred during the City Board meeting in describing the distance from the city's planned location of a homeless day resource center (which he's suggested as an alternative for the vets center) and another facility for homeless families, Our House. He defends his effort and criticizes what I've written. The floor to the mayor:

• Brian Chilson
• TARGETED FOR REDEVELOPMENT: Blass building at 4th and Main and three-story annex.

• IN ITS HEYDAY: Blass building.

It will be developed for offices — Arkansas Child Support Enforcement will be a major tenant — 20 loft-style apartments and retail and restaurants, according to the news release. The development, as the site plan below shows, includes a new parking deck.

Child Support is to take about 65,000 of the 92,000 square feet of office space. About 7,500 square feet will be available for retail and restaurants. The three-story annex will be solely devoted to apartments. Green space is planned between that building and the new parking deck to the west.

Developers note other recent activities of progress on Main, including the recently completed Arkansas Rep renovation and work to improve the old Stephens Inc., properties at Capitol and Main. The Exchange Bank Building at at Capitol and Main is being renovated for the Department of Higher Education, currently in an adjacent building. IT staff from the Department of Education currently in two buildings, will consolidate there, too.

Child Support Enforcement will move from space in the old Arkla building on East Capitol, acquired several years ago by Moses Tucker. Chris Moses said the old Arkla building was "obsolete, but functionally and economically." There are no plans to move new tenants in that space. He said Moses Tucker hopes to announce a new development there in the next six to eight months. Demolition is one possibility, I gather, though he said it was too soon to say exactly what final plan might emerge.

Child Support expects to make its move to the new space in 12 to 14 months.

• ABRAMS

It's not official yet, but it looks like Bank of America has decided to go ahead with the home loan that will allow Valarie Abrams to move into the city's first shipping container home, bringing to a close a saga of home ownership promised (here) and withheld (here).

The bank had denied the loan for the house in the Pettaway neighborhood — which Abrams entered into a contract with the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. to buy two years ago — just as the house was move-in ready, on the basis that it was too "unusual" to accurately appraise. Abrams was closely involved with the final touches on the home, including paint colors and lighting fixtures.

Abrams got the word late Friday that she was cleared to close and that the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, which worked with Abrams to get the loan, would be formally notified Tuesday. That's good news both for Abrams and the DLRCDC.

• KATV: Now at Fourth and Main.

Last time I checked, KATV General Manager Mark Rose, though confirming that Channel 7 was giving some thought to a move from its long-time location at Fourth and Main, said no specific plans had been nailed down.

I'm hearing now that the station's move to western Little Rock, Chenal Valley area, is firming up. I'm checking.

Likeliest buyer would be Stephens Inc., which has acquired a signifcant portion of the Main Street corridor (and cleared a lot of that).

(Hey, maybe they could put the veteran service center there. No liquor store across the street, Mayor Stodola.)

UPDATE: Mark Rose got back to me. No deal has been done, period, he says. He confirmed that the station had looked at property on Rahling Road, as well as several other properties out west. "We're just looking at anything with enough square footage and parking to see if it could ever come to fruitiion," he said. He added, "Personally, I think it's time to look at a new location or a major renovation, so that's kind of why we're seeing what's available."

• CIGAR BAR: Planned for 109 Main.

Dana Carney in the city planning office confirms he's reviewing an application from John Michael Peace for a permit for Maduro Cigar Bar and Lounge. It promises, in addition to cigars, cocktails and light food. It won't serve a menu extensive enough to qualify for a restaurant permit, so it is seeking a private club permit from state ABC. All private club applications must go through the conditional use permit under city rules, but Carvey said he saw no obvious obstacles on this application.

This won't be an after-hours joint. Hours are said to be 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday and untiil midnight Friday and Saturday. I believe this is the space occupied for a time by Sims Bar-b-q. The permit should go before the Planning Commission Feb. 2.

Moses Tucker Real Estate has announced that it's constructing 1,000 square feet of retail space in three bays on the ground floor of the Arkansas Capital Commerce Center parking deck on East Third Street.

Jimmy Moses said the "garage shops" could be leased long-term, or even for as short a term as a weekend, according to a merchant's needs. He sees it as a way to "incubate" creative tenants. This will add to other new retail along the stretch, including coming retail space on the ground floor of the Tuf Nut Lofts across the street, where the Andina Cafe is to relocate in the fall.

Driving to work this morning through the teeth gnashing hordes of the damned anticipating another 100+ day in Arkansas, I fell in behind the Google Streetview car — a sporty compact festooned with Google logos and with one of these atop a mast on the roof. When last seen, it turned on Ringo Street near downtown.

Now's your chance for Internet immortality, Little Rock. In the meantime, let's all just hope that while they're in Central Arkansas, they don't catch any more thrilling scenes like this.

• A worker guides the first container home module to its foundation.

Installation of the first shipping container homes in Little Rock and what consultants say are the first platinum-level LEED-rated homes in the nation began today as the first of the pre-cut containers were lowered by crane onto foundations at the corner of 21st Street and Commerce Street.

We wrote about the coming of the container homes in our story on the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp.'s unconventional revitalization of the Pettaway neighborhood last month.

The steel homes, at 417 and 421 E. 22nd St., will be "safe from storms, safe from insects, safe from termites" and energy efficient, Brian Corbitt told a crowd gathered this morning at the site, and will be finished out with recycled and sustainable items, such as bamboo flooring and low-VOC paint.

Valarie Abrams, who has bought the container home at 421 E. 22nd, which will be a mirror image of the steel home next to it, signed the papers to buy the home a year ago. She said when CDC director Scott Grummer showed her the plans for the home, which will be composed of four of the steel containers, she was interested; "when he told me my light bill may not be over 40 bucks a month, that was the clincher."

The homes, which had windows pre-cut at a site in North Little Rock, will take a couple of months to finish out.