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SUPPORTS DOWNTOWN: Mayor Mark Stodola says Main Street is best for “creation of jobs.”
So UAMS likes downtown. Business interests like downtown. But under one roof? “Bioventures should be an anchor tenant, there’s nothing wrong with that,” nGage’s Ford said. But, “if you are going to call it a bioventure park, you automatically shut out some kinds of private capital.” Hence the corridor idea — with BioVentures as an anchor tenant in the inaugural building and job-producing tech incubators and businesses as satellites. Chesshir, as the chamber’s representative and the swing vote, made concessions to UALR, saying he could see that its research advantages — such as its multimillion dollar microscopes — weren’t moveable in the way that BioVentures’ were. “In the end,” he said, perhaps two campuses would be best, the idea that set Flake off. In a larger concession, Chesshir suggested that the board bring longtime consultant Charles Dilks back to work with whichever outside party is hired to do due diligence and negotiate with property owners. Dilks, while he has equivocated on size needs for the park — he recommended 30 acres in the 2009 Angle tech park feasibility study commissioned by the chamber but, in suggesting the Sears site, said 12 acres would do — has never backed
off his opinion that a site downtown, distant from sponsoring institutions, is a bad idea. Dilks can be expected to opine, once again, why the park should be built at the Sears property. That the site was still under debate after the vote had been taken left one board member “numb,” he said. Not only were old battles being fought, but the post-vote conversation veered into the weird. Good insisted proximity was crucial to getting the cheap work force — students — that the park would need, prompting Zaffaroni to ask what difference it made once they got into a car whether they were driving to a site downtown or to the Sears site at I-630 and University. “They’ll ride their bikes,” Good proclaimed, provoking visions of students, laptops and research on backs, peddling 12 blocks on University, one of Little Rock’s most heavily trafficked streets, to get to the park. Good also suggested that the board bring the “downtown group” — the Downtown Partnership — back before the board to talk about the location and lamented that the Sears site “will not be there forever.” Johnson wondered how the park could be built downtown — “Are we talking about tearing down and building new or what?” — and maintain synergy. In response, Mayor Mark Stodola CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
LIVE. WORK. PLAY. AND INVEST.
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OCTOBER 31, 2013
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