Business World |
April 2015
88
a bygone era where he witnessed the city of
Little Rock headed for troublesome times.
“In mid 1980s, the vogue thing was to cre-
ate a downtown mall,” he said. “We did what
Memphis did and took a bunch of building
and created a mall, closed off the streets and
ran every retail business out west into the
suburbs. Not the intended consequence, but
it was the consequence.”
“It effectively created several blocks of va-
cant building. The only thing that existed
was a military surplus store, a wine/liquor
store and a wig shop. It persisted like this un-
til about 24 months ago.”
MAIN STREET
REVITALIZATION
Widely perceived as a place in decline, Main
Street sat idly by as nearby neighbourhoods
basked in a revitalization and rebirth of
their own. The reclamation project, known
as the Creative Corridor focuses on a four-
block segment of Main Street, which was
considered to be unsafe and uninviting. The
three-phase approach, to be completed in in-
crements reintroduces the traditional social
functions of streets back into city life through
the creation of gateways, the development of
a plaza and a low impact development infra-
