creative corridor presentation - downtown little · pdf filethe creative corridor introduces...

Low Impact Development Plan

Project Information/Descriptive Data/Sustainable Design Information

1. Intent and Innovation: The Creative Corridor offers a vision for the reclamation of a neglected Main Street while providing an affordable downtown living option presently unavailable in Little Rock. The vision retrofits a four-block segment through a new land-use mix that includes residential, tourism, work, and the cultural arts rather than Main Street’s traditional retail base. The challenge involves restructuring a public realm conceived for workaday commercial throughput to now serve 24/7 urban lifestyles with a high level of livability (embracing all 10 of AIA’s Principles for Livable Communities). This model Complete Streets project preserves 891,000 square feet of existing space in 28 historical structures and stipulates mixed-use functions in 532,000 square feet among four proposed infill structures.

Complete StreetsThe Creative Corridor demonstrates Complete Street principles wherein streets for downtown contexts are designed to accommodate all transportation users—pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and public transit users of all ages and abilities in a safe manner. The Creative Corridor expands amenities for pedestrians, provides dedicated bicycling lanes, rationalizes parking, calms traffic, and plans for the eventuality of rail transit. Complete Streets entail compact, mixed-use land uses and multi-modal transportation investments that factor access and equity in addition to mobility. The Creative Corridor introduces affordable urban housing on Main Street next to bus and rail transit facilities. Complete Streets also reward walking, meaning that streets are vibrant frameworks supportive of non-traffic functions related to gathering, recreation, and shopping. The Creative Corridor introduces shared street configurations

The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization for Little Rockwith particular attention to novel townscaping and frontage systems connecting public and private spaces.

Low Impact Development StreetscapesThe Creative Corridor’s Low Impact Development (LID) treatment network—ecologically-based stormwater runoff management—integrates the recommendations of an EPA “Greening America’s Capital” study for Main Street. The street becomes an ecological asset as the Creative Corridor treats water pollution on site rather than transfer pollutants elsewhere. LID landscapes include urban tree systems to mitigate heat island effect accompanied by native xeriscapes that enhance biodiversity. The street features a promenade and shared street landscapes to deliver many of the 17 recognized ecosystem services—atmospheric regulation, disturbance (flooding) regulation, water regulation, sediment control, nutrient cycling, waste treatment, pollination, habitat, etc.

Public, Private, and Nonprofit PartnershipsThe City is brokering unique relationships with developers and nonprofits to subsidize consolidation of scattered arts groups, including space for more than 600 students in summer and after-school education programs in theater, symphonic, ballet, and visual arts on building ground floors. These education programs recruit from and support all income groups, and their productions constitute a new economic development ecology on Main Street. The City has also incented the introduction of affordable housing in the Main Street district.

2. Energy: Building envelope employs passive solar design strategies with shading strategies at the street level and fin technologies to optimize desirable solar gain and deflection.a. Predicted reduction in overall community EUI compared to current or equivalent conditions: A 50% reduction for renovated (window and insulation replacement and MEP systems) and new buildings including new LED lighting for public right-of-way.b. Predicted percent contribution from integrated, community-based renewable resources: n/a.

3. Community Connectivity: Little Rock has too much parking. Surface parking is rationalized with a reduction in surface area without losing capacity. Traffic is calmed in the first phase; bicycle travel facilities and expanded pedestrian areas are introduced in the second and third phases; and rail transit infrastructure is introduced in the fourth phase. This will be the first affordable downtown neighborhood.a. Parking ratio: project converts lot-based parking along Main Street to structured parking within mixed use. Parking never becomes its own land use. b. Automobile trip reduction: 25% reduction since one-third of trips are for work commutes. The public transit component should lead to another 25% reduction for a total of 50%.c. Walk Score rating: 94 Walkers’ Paradise.

4. Water: New buildings will incorporate green roofs, and the LID retrofits will substitute pervious paving and landscaped-based treatment facilities for impervious paving—an 18,000 square foot reduction in impervious paving. a. Percent precipitation managed on site: 100% capacity within a 25-year storm event.b. Percent waste water used on site: against state law.c. Regulated potable water reduction from baseline: buildings are targeted for a 50% reduction.

Project Challenge: From Commerce to CultureThe Creative Corridor retrofits a four-block segment of an endangered downtown Main Street through economic development catalyzed by the cultural arts rather than Main Street’s traditional retail base. The goal is to structure an identity for the Creative Corridor rooted in a mixed-use working and living environment anchored by the arts. The challenge involves restructuring a public realm conceived for workaday commercial activities to now serve 24/7 urban lifestyles with a high level of livability. The project approach employs four developmental phases in the corridor’s transformation to a downtown node. Nodes provide a sense of centrality and opportunity for social life that counters the dominance of mobility in corridors. Retrofit strategies entail right-of-way reconfigurations accommodating streetcar rail transit as well as pedestrian-oriented streetscapes and townscaping structures that frame a new land-use ecology of residential, tourism, work, and the cultural arts. An additional challenge regards the compatibility between proposed larger infill buildings using curtain wall technologies and early 20th century commercial buildings fashioned from the expressive order of brick and stone. To ensure coherence among different eras of development, design solutions rely on the urbanism of streetscapes—landscape architecture, ecological engineering, public space configurations, frontage systems, and miscellaneous assemblages.

The Creative Corridor Plan is premised on the aggregation of cultural organizations scattered throughout Little Rock. Some of these groups exist at the financial margins and their ongoing viability increases through new synergies common to aggregation. Facilities slated to anchor the Creative Corridor include instruction and production space for the symphony, ballet, arts center, visual artists, theater, and dance, as well as a culinary arts economy that triangulates restaurants, demonstration, and education. Despite adaptive reuse challenges to residential, large-format office, and cultural production functions, the Creative Corridor generates niche value from the reclamation of a heritage environment whose exceptional place-making qualities cannot be replicated.

Preparation by the CommunityProject planning was funded under the National Endowment for the Arts’ signature “Our Town” 2011-2012 grant program, enabling public-private partnerships and more than 30 organizations to collaborate on the planning effort. The City’s Main Street Task Force and property owners participated in design workshops, as well as the region’s primary cultural arts groups who have agreed to relocate to Main Street. The current planning effort follows up on a three-day charrette with 120 attendees conducted by the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in late 2009. During 2010, Main Street was the subject of an environmental streetscape design study featuring Low Impact Development (LID) under the EPA’s “Greening America’s Capitals” program. Based on the Creative Corridor plan, EPA and the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission just committed $1.2 million in capital funding to implement the plan’s demonstration LID streetscapes under their section 319 Nonpoint Source Pollution Program, beginning in 2013. The plan leads the effort to change the City’s codes, making LID (currently illegal) a by-right standard for the ecological management of urban stormwater runoff. Meanwhile, the City and project team are preparing tenant build-out plans for the 500-block of Main Street. Other historic structures in the Creative Corridor are either under contract or undergoing more than $30 million in rehabilitation.

The goal is to structure an identity for the Creative Corridor rooted in a mixed-use working and living en-vironment anchored by the cultural arts. The challenge involves restruc-turing a public realm conceived for workaday commercial throughput to now serve 24-7 urban lifestyles with a high level of livability.

Main Street DeclineLittle Rock’s Main Street decline happened late; a victim of the City’s zealousness in securing federal urban renewal funds beginning in the 1950s. The Central Little Rock Urban Renewal Project eventually became a national model for urban neighborhood clearance: 580 acres of the downtown were demolished, including 471 commercial buildings (more than 1600 buildings total in a city of 193,000) and population density dropped from 18 people per acre to five in 1970. In some downtown neighborhoods the population dropped 75 percent. Currently sustained by state office tenants, Main Street is an urban island among a few intact downtown districts floating within an otherwise undeveloped street fabric. Downtown’s single largest land use is parking, and the City’s retail base is not coming back anytime soon.

Alignment between Public and Private InvestmentsThe design vision is holistic but the approach is based on incremental implementation that reinforces identity building with each subsequent phase. Urban revitalization efforts are generally susceptible to failure when they either lack capacity for incremental development or balance between public and private investment. Particularly in today’s risk-averse financing climate with limited capital flows, viable

A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable of producing a sharp image, plays a social role as well. It can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group communication….Indeed, a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience.

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City

“ “Capitol Avenue

Main Stre

et

Downtown Little Rock: Intersection of Capitol and Main

Film School

Ballet

Symphony Orchestra

Arts Center

Repertory Theater

Music Center

Artists

Dance Project

Fashion Studio

Culinary School

Capitol Avenue

Main Stre

etR

epertory Theater

Arts Center

Culinary S

chool

Music C

enterB

alletFilm

School

Dance Project

Fashion Studio

Artists

Sym

phony Orchestra

Scattered Cultural Assets Aggregated Creative Corridor

urban plans will have to be structured around small-grained infill development strategies reliant on staged or self-financing. Thus project phasing begins with prudent right-of-way improvements proportional to expected market development without getting too far ahead of expected tax yields (e.g., more than 150 affordable and middle-income housing units have been developed with over 100 more under contract). Each phase establishes self-sufficiency without reliance on a subsequent phase to appear complete.

Public improvements send important signals to the market and maintain a de facto development momentum. Working with developers who will subsidize tenant space for cultural groups and affordable housing, City participation steers market interest and incents appropriate, equitable development accommodating all income levels within the corridor. Creative Corridor identity features Complete Streets practices for pedestrian-oriented environments, reinforcing the production and enjoyment of the creative arts, and general livability. Public improvements result in a built public realm commensurate in distinction with proposed high-quality architectural facilities.

Design Approach: From Traffic Corridor to Green NodeThe project approach employs four phases of development in the transformation of the corridor segment to a downtown node. Nodes provide a sense of centrality and opportunity

for social life that counters the dominance of mobility in corridors. Each phase can be accomplished in succession, or all at once, as private investment and political will permit. Each phase entails transformations among public right-of-way improvements, building frontage, and infill proposals involving new buildings.

Phase 1: Develop nodes for enhanced pedestrian activity which serve as gateways marking the Creative Corridor segment of Main Street. Through the introduction of shared street strategies that privilege a pedestrian environment supportive of non-traffic functions like outdoor dining and theater gathering, gateway nodes frame intimate social spaces within an otherwise continuous corridor.

Phase 2: Develop a center to the Creative Corridor marking the most important intersection symbolically in Little Rock—Capitol Avenue and Main Street. A large central plaza for vehicles and pedestrians accommodates large public events and forms an appropriate gateway to the state capitol building to the west. The shared street configuration houses an elevated lawn/amphitheater, arcade, and space for mobile food trucks to service events and downtown office workers.

Phase 3: Connect the three nodes with a thickened edge or pedestrian promenade on the west side of the

street, bordering the proposed plaza at the intersection of Main Street and Capitol Avenue. The pedestrian promenade is a two-block allee of trees housing outdoor dining courts, public art, and consequential low impact development pocket parks for ecological-based stormwater management to be funded by the EPA. The LID treatment train includes flow spreaders, pervious paving, bioswales, tree box filters, and filtration facilities to control sedimentation and treat stormwater runoff.

Phase 4: Install rail transit infrastructure and facilities per Metroplan’s (Central Arkansas’ regional planning authority) proposal for future streetcar expansion, and relocate dedicated tree-lined bicycle lanes to parallel Scott and Louisiana Streets. The three streets combined offer full multi-modal passage between downtown and urban neighborhoods to the south.

Merits: A Model Complete StreetMain Street is an important link in our cultural gene pool, representing a placemaking intelligence whose loss diminishes our collective city-building capacities. The Main Street design vision punctuates a long participatory process undertaken by City leadership to revitalize this corridor in a region that has been ardently anti-urban and pro-property rights. The Creative Corridor offers a retrofit program beyond passive frontage preservation and failed street beautification to negotiate challenging adaptive reuses, including corporate property owners—who have demolished historic Main Street structures—scheduled to build large contemporary mixed-use office structures on the four vacant lots (Arkansas law does not permit transfer of development rights). Rather than simply rely on frontage guidelines, planning and design negotiate conflicting architectural traditions through the use of townscaping elements and structures (i.e., arcades, urban porches, amphitheaters, vitrines, etc.) that bridge right-of-way design with building interiors. Design adds development value to win market concessions.

The Creative Corridor employs comprehensive Complete Streets practices to phase the introduction of demonstration public spaces unfamiliar to the City—integrated LID treatment network, shared streets, streetcar transit and tree-shaded bicycle lanes, outdoor performance facilities, and green roof terraces. Despite the shift from a familiar retail-oriented public realm, adaptive reuse engages the full range of urban design, landscape architecture, ecological engineering, and public art to structure a 24/7 corridor identity for this new residential, tourism, and work land-use mix. The City is also collaborating with developers to incent the inclusion of affordable housing among the residential units planned for Main Street (Arkansas law does not permit inclusionary zoning). In the upside of down, design sets the stage for policy reform of state enabling legislation and municipal development codes supportive of livable downtowns.

Main Street became to America what the piazza was to Italy.

Richard Longstreth, The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture

“ “Programmatic Elements of the Creative Corridor

Classic Main StreetMain Street was once a high-density hub of activity in Little Rock—boasting 50% of the county’s commerce and housing one of the

nation’s most extensive streetcar systems (48 miles) for a city of only 40,000!

Main Street TodayBeautification has not sparked any revitalization initiatives...

Urban Renewal580 acres of the downtown were demol-ished, including 471 commercial buildings (more than 1600 total in a city of 193,000) and the population density dropped from

18 people per acre to five in 1970.

1980196519201890’s

19551906

2012

Given the new mix of uses dominated by the cultural arts and residential, Main Street must be livable after work hours—24/7.

Among the most common technique for making Main Street work as a design is the enhancement of any nodal space, or even the whole creation of such nodes that now serve as greens, vest-pocket parks, or squares. The nodes help introduce an element of centrality and enclosure, and in so doing attempt to influence our perceptions of Main Street as a safe social environment.

“ “

Richard Francaviglia, Main Street Revisited

0’ 150’

300 Block

400 Block

500 Block

600 Block

4th Street

Capitol Avenue

6th Street

7th Street

3rd Street

2nd Street

8th Street

Main Street

Louisiana Street

Scott Street

existing 1 2 3 4create gateways... develop a center... thicken the edge... create a transit district!

Creative Corridor Phasing Strategy

infill building

The first step to defining the Main Street Creative Corridor will be the establishment of the two urban thresholds as pedestrian tables.

1 Create Gateways

North Gateway Plaza

South Gateway PlazaTo

Capitol

Artist Lofts

Culinary School and Apartments

0’ 150’

600 Block

500 Block

400 Block

300 Block

300 Block

400 Block

500 Block

600 Block

North Gateway Plaza1

1

2

2

6

6

4

4

8

8

3

3

7

7

5

5

910

10

9

Rain gardensPlaza seatingStreet light gardenPublic art padContinuous pedestrian tableGreen wallUrban staircaseUrban patioBack-in parkingProposed transit system

View looking into the North Gateway Plaza from the new culinary school.

rain gardensare planted depressions designed to infiltrate stormwater runoff, but not hold it.

rain garden

right of way

rain garden

permeable pavement

throughway

cardinal flower

muhly grass

red oak

Chinese pistache

pervious paversallow water to vertically flow

through hard surfaces. As substitutes for impervious paving, they support both pedestrian and vehicular

traffic.

View looking south from the North Gateway Plaza.

4th

Stre

et

4th

Stre

et

300-302 Main StreetFulk and C.M. Taylor Buildings

313-315 Main StreetGus Blass Wholesale

320-322 Main StreetThe Mann Building

300 Block West 300 Block East

Since architectural guidelines are not politically feasible, townscaping elements and frontage systems mediate between new and old structures, big and small scales, and create anchoring spaces in the corridor.

Recycle existing and assorted Main Street lamps as a light garden, creating a gateway feature.

The plaza patio creates new gathering spaces that extend

into upper levels.

Plaza street furniture arranged in room configurations.

Remove

Remove

Remove

1

2

6

4

8

3 7

5

9

10

10

SouthGateway Plaza12

6

4

8

3

7

5

9

Rain gardensPlaza seatingStreet light gardenPublic art padContinuous pedestrian tableRepertory Theatre marqueeGallery boxesAtriumBack-in parkingProposed transit system

rain gardensare planted depressions designed to infiltrate stormwater runoff, but not hold it.

pervious pavingallows water to

vertically flow through hard surfaces.

As substitutes for impervious paving, they support both

pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

View looking north from the South Gateway Plaza.

yellow coneflower

maiden grass

ginkgo biloba

littleleaf linden

new frontage

right of way

rain garden

permeable pavement

throughway

View looking into the South Gateway Plaza from the artist lofts building.

613-615 Main StreetFulk-Arkansas Democrat Building

609 Main StreetGaverty Furniture Building

6th

Stre

et

6th

Stre

et

7th

Stre

et

7th

Stre

et

Recycle existing and assorted Main Street lamps as a light garden, creating a

gateway feature.

Never shutter a building on Main

Street

Remove reflective film from glass

Complement recent renovations to the Arkansas Repertory Theater with a new LED marquee, adding additional signage and a sheltered pedestrian entrance.

New room-scaled gallery vitrines in the spirit of early 20th century storefront logics.

600 Block East 600 Block West

Remove

Mixed-Use Art Theater and Office Complex-to be developed by a corporate

landowner

Capitol Avenue Plaza

Amphitheater

0’ 150’

The second step is to define the central event plaza at the intersection of Capitol Avenue and Main Street—the most symbolic intersection in Little Rock.

600 Block

500 Block

400 Block

300 Block

300 Block

400 Block

500 Block

600 Block

Develop A Center 2

10

10

Capitol Avenue Plaza1

1

2

2

6

6

4

4

8

8

3

3

3

7

7

5

5

9

9

AmphitheaterPlaza pavilionTransit stationsPublic artMovie screenCafePlaza clubRoof gardenBack-in parkingProposed transit system

View looking northwest into the Capitol Avenue Plaza.

transitstationamphitheater

permeable pavement plaza throughway

View looking south from the roof garden at Capitol and Main.

View looking south from the North Gateway Plaza.

Replace inappropriately installed street trees with a new LID

pedestrian promenade

Tech Startup and Retail

0’ 150’

600 Block

500 Block

300 Block

300 Block

400 Block

500 Block

600 Block

Thicken The EdgeLink phases 1 and 2 together with a thickened pedestrian promenade.

3

LIDPedestrian Promenade1

1

2

2

6

6

4

4

8

8

3

3

7

7

5

5

BioswaleGarden roomArcadePublic artGallerySymphony rehearsal spaceBack-in parkingProposed transit system

bioswalesare open, gently sloped, vegetated channels designed for treatment and conveyance of stormwater runoff.

permeable weirstypically constructed from treated lumber, with spaces between

each timber to provide slow passage of

stormwater through long, narrow openings

View looking north from the LID pedestrian promenade in the 400 Block.

white lupine

horsetail

lacebark elm

little bluestem

rain garden

right of way

bioswaletree

moundpermeable pavement

throughway

View looking north from the east side of the 500 Block.

Cap

itol A

venu

e

4th

Stre

et

6th

Stre

et

400 Block East 400 Block West

Plaza structures facilitate a larger pedestrian-scaled activity within the gateway intersection connecting the state capitol complex and Main Street.

Cap

itol A

venu

e

4th

Stre

et

6th

Stre

et

500 Block West 500 Block East

500 Main StreetThe State Bank Building

534 Main StreetPfeifer Brothers Department Store

Frontage systems and townscaping elements serve new cultural arts groups and their educational programs—the symphony, ballet, arts center, and individual artists.

Remove window treatment and reflective film from ground floor offices (typical).

Remove

Remove

600 Block

500 Block

400 Block

300 Block

Create a Transit District!Make Louisiana and Scott Streets bicycle boulevards and extend the existing streetcar

system along Main Street, connecting downtown to first ring suburbs.

4