The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization for Little Rock
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 Streets 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 AIAs 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 Streets
The Creative Corridor demonstrates Complete Street principles
wherein streets for downtown contexts are designed to
accommodate all transportation userspedestrians, 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
Low Impact Development Plan
with particular attention to novel townscaping and frontage
systems connecting public and private spaces.
Low Impact Development Streetscapes
The Creative Corridors Low Impact Development (LID)
treatment networkecologically-based stormwater runoff
managementintegrates the recommendations of an EPA
Greening Americas 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
servicesatmospheric regulation, disturbance (flooding)
regulation, water regulation, sediment control, nutrient cycling,
waste treatment, pollination, habitat, etc.
Public, Private, and Nonprofit Partnerships
The 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 pavingan 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.

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.
A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable of producing a sharp image, plays a social role as well. It can furnish
Project Challenge: From Commerce to Culture
The Creative Corridor retrofits a four-block segment of
an endangered downtown Main Street through economic
development catalyzed by the cultural arts rather than Main
Streets 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 corridors
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 streetscapeslandscape 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.
Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
Preparation by the Community
Project 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 Citys Main Street Task Force and property owners
participated in design workshops, as well as the regions
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 EPAs Greening Americas Capitals program. undeveloped street fabric. Downtowns single largest land
Based on the Creative Corridor plan, EPA and the Arkansas
Natural Resources Commission just committed $1.2 million
in capital funding to implement the plans demonstration
LID streetscapes under their section 319 Nonpoint Source
Pollution Program, beginning in 2013. The plan leads the
effort to change the Citys 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 Decline
Little Rocks Main Street decline happened late; a victim
of the Citys 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
use is parking, and the Citys retail base is not coming back
anytime soon.
Alignment between Public and Private Investments
The 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 todays risk-
averse financing climate with limited capital flows, viable
Cap
itol
Ave
nue
et
re
St
n
ai
M
Downtown Little Rock: Intersection of Capitol and Main
 Ballet

Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Orchestra

Music Center
Artists Ballet
Culinary School

Arts Center
Film School Cap
itol
Ave
nue
Dance Project
Music Center

Artists

Fashion Studio

Fashion Studio
Dance Project
Film School
Culinary School

Repertory Theater
et
re
Repertory Theater

St
n
ai
M
Arts Center

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 Node
The 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 RockCapitol 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 Metroplans (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.

Main Street became to America what
the piazza was to Italy.
undertaken by City leadership to revitalize this corridor in a
Richard Longstreth, The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to
American Commercial Architecture
Merits: A Model Complete Street
Main 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
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 ownerswho have demolished historic Main Street
structuresscheduled 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.
Programmatic Elements of the Creative Corridor
The Creative Corridor employs comprehensive Complete
Streets practices to phase the introduction of demonstration
public spaces unfamiliar to the Cityintegrated 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.
 Urban Renewal
580 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.

1890s 1920 19651980

1906 1955
Classic Main Street
Main Street was once a high-density hub of
activity in Little Rockboasting 50% of the
countys commerce and housing one of the
nations most extensive streetcar systems (48
miles) for a city of only 40,000!

2012
Main Street Today
Beautification has not sparked any revitalization initiatives...
Given the new mix of uses dominated by
the cultural arts and residential, Main Street
must be livable after work hours24/7.

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.

300 Block
Richard Francaviglia, Main Street Revisited

Louisiana Street

Main

Scott Street
2nd Street

Street
3rd Street

400 Block
4th Street

Capitol Avenue

6th Street
infill
building

7th Street

500 Block
8th Street

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

Creative Corridor Phasing Strategy

600 Block
0 150
 300 Block
Artist Lofts

l
pito
South Gateway Plaza

Ca
To

400 Block
600 B
lock

500 B
lock

400 B
lock

500 Block
300 B
lock

1
North Gateway Plaza
Culinary School and Apartments

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

600 Block
0 150
 North
Gateway
Plaza
1 Rain gardens
2 Plaza seating
3 Street light garden
4 Public art pad
5 Continuous pedestrian table
6 Green wall
7 Urban staircase
8 Urban patio
6 9 Back-in parking
10 Proposed transit system

9
8

4
3

7
5

10
 cardinal flower rain gardens
muhly grass are planted depressions
designed to infiltrate
stormwater runoff, but
not hold it.

Chinese pistache

red oak

pervious pavers
allow water to vertically flow
through hard surfaces. As
substitutes for impervious
paving, they support both
pedestrian and vehicular
traffic.

View looking into the North Gateway Plaza from the new culinary school.
permeable
rain pavement rain
garden throughway garden
right of way
View looking south from the North Gateway Plaza.
 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.

Remove

Remove
Remove

Recycle existing and assorted Main

Street lamps as a light garden, creating
a gateway feature.
Plaza street furniture arranged
in room configurations. The plaza patio creates new
gathering spaces that extend
into upper levels.
4th Street

4th Street
300 Block West 300 Block East

320-322 Main Street 300-302 Main Street 313-315 Main Street

The Mann Building Fulk and C.M. Taylor Buildings Gus Blass Wholesale
 South
Gateway
Plaza
1 Rain gardens
2 Plaza seating
3 Street light garden
4 Public art pad
5 Continuous pedestrian table
6 Repertory Theatre marquee
7 Gallery boxes
8 Atrium
9 Back-in parking
10 Proposed transit system

9 8

6
3 7

5 1

10
 yellow coneflower rain gardens
maiden grass are planted depressions
designed to infiltrate
stormwater runoff, but
not hold it.

littleleaf linden
ginkgo biloba

pervious paving
allows 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.

permeable
rain pavement new
garden throughway frontage
right of way
View looking into the South Gateway Plaza from the artist lofts building.
 Remove

New room-scaled gallery

vitrines in the spirit of early
20th century storefront
logics.

Complement recent renovations to

Recycle existing and the Arkansas Repertory Theater
assorted Main Street lamps with a new LED marquee, adding
as a light garden, creating a additional signage and a sheltered
gateway feature. pedestrian entrance.

Never shutter a Remove reflective

building on Main film from glass
7th Street

6th Street

6th Street

7th Street
Street

600 Block East 600 Block West

609 Main Street 613-615 Main Street

Gaverty Furniture Building Fulk-Arkansas Democrat Building
 Mixed-Use Art Theater
and Office Complex-to be

300 Block
developed by a corporate
landowner

Amphitheater
Capitol Avenue Plaza

400 Block
600 B
lock

500 B
lock

400 B
lock

500 Block
300 B
lock

Develop A Center 2
The second step is to define the central event plaza at the intersection of
Capitol Avenue and Main Streetthe most symbolic intersection in Little Rock.

600 Block
0 150
 Capitol
Avenue
Plaza
1 Amphitheater
2 Plaza pavilion
3 Transit stations
4 Public art
5 Movie screen
6 Cafe
7 Plaza club
8 Roof garden
9 Back-in parking
10 Proposed transit system

6
7

1
3
4
9
2

3
10
 View looking northwest into the Capitol Avenue Plaza.

permeable transit
amphitheater pavement plaza station throughway
 View looking south from the North Gateway Plaza.

View looking south from the roof garden at Capitol and Main.
Replace inappropriately installed
street trees with a new LID
pedestrian promenade

300 Block
400 Block
600 B
lock

500 B
lock

500 Block
300 B
lock

3
Tech Startup and Retail

Thicken The Edge

Link phases 1 and 2 together with a thickened pedestrian promenade.

600 Block
0 150
 LID
Pedestrian
Promenade
1 Bioswale
2 Garden room
3 Arcade
4 Public art
5 Gallery
6 Symphony rehearsal space
7 Back-in parking
8 Proposed transit system

8
 white lupine bioswales
horsetail are open, gently
sloped, vegetated
channels designed
for treatment and
conveyance of
stormwater runoff.

little bluestem
lacebark elm

permeable weirs
typically 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.
permeable
tree pavement rain
mound bioswale throughway garden
right of way
View looking north from the east side of the 500 Block.
 Plaza structures facilitate a larger pedestrian-scaled
activity within the gateway intersection connecting
the state capitol complex and Main Street.

Capitol Avenue
6th Street

4th Street
400 Block East 400 Block West
 Remove

Remove

Frontage systems and townscaping elements serve

new cultural arts groups and their educational
programsthe symphony, ballet, arts center, and
individual artists.

Remove window treatment

and reflective film from ground
floor offices (typical).
Capitol Avenue
6th Street

4th Street
500 Block West 500 Block East

534 Main Street 500 Main Street

Pfeifer Brothers Department Store The State Bank Building
600 B
lock

500 B
lock

400 B
lock

4
300 B
lock

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.