Park Ave.: New plans CORRECTED
Our Insider this week reported the Hillcrest Neighborhood Association's opposition to the announced plans for the Park Avenue shopping center planned to replace University Mall. Too much parking lot. Not enough of early promises of mixed uses.
The item also noted that city officials were still meeting with Strode Property Group. There have been developments. Strode has made changes to the plan that reportedly have satisfied Mayor Mark Stodola. It's going to get a hurryup look at the Planning Commission today next week in hopes that it will win approval and be poised for speedy City Board approval.
The city is mindful of the work that went into a design district along University Avenue. It is also mindful of seeming inhospitable to a development in the range of $100 million, particularly in economically difficult times. My source says I'll like what I see. Not having seen it, I can't say yet that I agree.
CORRECTION: I must have misheard my report on when this will be heard because we've since checked with the planning department, which says the meeting to consider this is next week. The drawings are not in the office yet, but are expected by Fed Ex tomorrow.
Comments
If it weren't for the prospect of making money off of the deal, if I were the Strode Property Group, I would pack-up and move out and let that gaping, ugly, rock-lined hole sit there empty and surrounded by chainlink fencing for the next eight years and give the area's resident complainers something real to complain about.
I have watched the proposals be presented on Little Rock's Government TV channel (which is a real public service, by the way). They are both head-and-shoulders above most of what has been built in west Little Rock and a far cry better than looking at the old University Mall every day.
We are talking about a property which was formerly an ugly and decrepit mall which remains bordered on both sides by ugly and decrepit developments on one of the city's major north-south arteries one hundred yards from the Interstate and not in a residential neighborhood. How 'bout that Bennigans!
We're acting like somebody has proposed to build a stripmall in Central Park fronting Fifth Avenue.
Posted by: Heights Observer![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/nav-commenters.gif)
|
June 14, 2008 10:43 AM