innovate arkansas

Shattered windows, slumping rooflines and crumbling shingles are common sights in the old neighborhoods and commercial districts of Arkansas, even on buildings known to be landmarks.

In the 1960s, flight to the suburbs and urban renewal turned many historic districts across the nation into ruins as buildings were abandoned, ignored and finally destroyed. Historic preservation groups were catalyzed to bring people back to the old neighborhoods.

In Arkansas, the most dramatic example might be downtown North Little Rock.

Sandra Taylor Smith, director of the North Little Rock History Commission, grew up in North Little Rock and watched through the 1970s as more and more businesses deserted the district for lucrative ventures in the McCain Mall area.

By the 1990s, the city's Main Street was a one-way avenue pouring traffic back across the river.

"The whole purpose was to get you back home," Smith said.

Ignorance or disregard of the area had sent the homes and businesses into a spiral of decay, and urban renewal had already bulldozed almost everything between Broadway and the river, Smith said.

"In 1991, the city's History Commission engaged me to document the buildings in downtown and the houses also, and to look at pursuing a listing on the National Register of Historic Places," she said. "The entire thought was to give this area the credibility that might help be a tool to push it forward."

The register started in the 1960s to bring historically significant buildings, districts and sites into the spotlight. But it's not a panacea.

"It doesn't have any power," said Mark Christ, community outreach director at the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. "It's strictly an honorific. But we hope that the knowledge of being properly recognized as having historic importance will motivate the property owners to protect and maintain the buildings."

Still, Smith agreed to it, surveying and photographing about 300 structures in North Little Rock. What she found wasn't encouraging.

"The city government had always remained downtown, but the houses had largely been divided, rented, made into boarding houses," she said. "What I call slumlords had obtained a lot of the houses with ill regard to their historical character."

The situation was so dire that Smith required police officers to follow her into some areas. Not only that, the idea of making the area a historic district was initially laughed at.

"At that time, I was told, 'No way,'" Smith said. "No way would it ever become a historic district. But we pursued it. The National Park Service in Washington, D.C., was impressed with Arkansas listing a working class historic district. Usually they would be larger, wealthier collections of homes."

The district had nothing individually spectacular, Smith said, but there was a strong collection of typical houses made for what was at the time a community of railroad and industrial workers.

The big turnaround started when the commission chose "Argenta Historic District" as a name for the area, harking back to an early name for North Little Rock.

"All of a sudden, people were saying, 'Oh, instead of the crime-ridden, decaying downtown, we're living in the Argenta Historic District,'" Smith said. "It was an incredible marketing tool to bring this neighborhood back."

And the neighborhood did come back. A quick walk down Main Street - now two-way again - proves this. Young shoppers browse art galleries and cafes and at night congregate outside pubs. The River Rail trundles by bustling storefronts, restored 1920s bungalows and freshly built townhomes. The slum of the 1990s has vanished.

"It's a desirable place to live," Smith said. "The proximity to locations is wonderful, and most of the housing in this neighborhood goes for around $100 per square foot. You could hardly give away a house previously."

 

Incentives

Preservationists live by the mantra of the greenest building being the one that's already built. While work on Argenta continues, preservation groups are helping homeowners resurrect and maintain other old neighborhoods.

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, for example, works with the federal government to help entrepreneurs and homeowners.

One of the main ways AHPP does this is through tax incentives. The Arkansas Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit went into effect in 2009. A 25 percent federal tax credit is available for buildings being rehabilitated for income-producing purposes. A 20 percent credit can be had by private property owners. Since their inception, the incentives have returned $1.6 million in credits from $21.4 million in private investments.

Private property owners can also benefit from tax deductions by donating conservation easements that obligate the owners to maintain the building's historic qualities. AHPP also administers some grant programs and helps homeowners with technical issues.

"We get lots of calls from people with a wide range of questions," Christ said. "Like what kind of shingles they should use in the house, what color it should be painted, what's an appropriate treatment for doors, windows. We offer advice on all that."

That service, he said, is free.

"We are a state agency," he said. "We're public servants. These are all your tax dollars at work."

Main Street Arkansas, which is focused on redeveloping downtown commercial districts, also has its roots with AHPP.

Outside of the government, other groups work to further preservation. The Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that complements the services offered by AHPP.

"We basically advocate and educate," said Vanessa McKuin, executive director of the alliance. "We encourage the type of tools homeowners have, like tax credits and the National Register."

The alliance makes a case for preservation on a statewide level, pushing for legislation like the 2009 tax credits. The group holds an annual preservation conference and publishes a yearly list of most endangered sites around the state. (Click here for a table of 2011's most endangered sites.)

On a local level, neighborhood groups educate residents on proper restoration techniques and qualities of historic architecture. Little Rock's Quapaw Quarter Association, for example, was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1968 to help rehabilitate the 9-square-mile area around the Governor's Mansion. Since then, it's extended its mission to advocate for every historic neighborhood in and around Little Rock.

"We worked with the Historic Preservation Alliance on the state tax credit in 2009," said Rhea Roberts, executive director of the QQA. "We mostly advocate and educate about preservation, but we have intervened for a couple of buildings."

The QQA hosts classes on preservation each month, publishes a newsletter and maintains an archive of architectural books and records on Little Rock neighborhoods.

 

The Future

Despite increased recognition of preservation, historic sites are still routinely demolished.

"You look out the windows here and you can see the empty lots of buildings that we lost just last year," Christ said from his office on the 15th floor of the Tower Building at 323 Center St. in downtown Little Rock.

Smith, in North Little Rock, said landfills were overflowing with wreckage from demolished buildings. Many of the commercial structures on North Main Street in Little Rock stand vacant. Neighborhoods like Dunbar, Wright Avenue in Little Rock and Baring Cross in North Little Rock are still in need of stability, not to mention older neighborhoods in ailing cities like Pine Bluff. McKuin, of the alliance, is herself restoring a house in the Little Rock Central High School neighborhood.

In that neighborhood, "There are a lot of vacant properties, disinvestment, issues with ownership, absentee landlords, deferred maintenance, demolition, neglect," she said. "These are all issues for historic properties - urban, rural, wherever."

McKuin said not just homes and businesses are targeted by restoration groups. Almost anything can be endangered: Churches, schools, theaters, bridges, cemeteries, even pastures that once were battlefields.

But the overarching attitude of preservation societies is an appreciation for what buildings and places mean to an area, both historically and economically.

"People don't travel to Europe because it's new," Roberts, at the QQA, said. "People like to go to unique places and visit them. That's what we're trying to do here, to take care of what we have."