Failure of North Little Rock planners and city officials to manage growth and infill leaves ridge-top property owners at risk:
Repairs split NLR neighbors
By Jake Sandlin
Sunday, February 21, 2010
LITTLE ROCK — Gingerly walking beside crevices that split a neighboring backyard, Bryan Rogers of North Little Rock talked last week about the fear and frustration he and others on North Cedar Street have lived with for the past year.
“It’s been steadily coming apart,” Rogers said of the fissure about 5 feet across and 15 feet deep in places as it slices across the sloping backyard at 4612 N. Cedar Street, abandoned by its owners months ago at the urging of city officials.
Next door, a retired couple moved out last week without selling, Rogers said. Cracks can be seen at thathouse’s foundation in back while the driveway in front has pulled about an inch away from the structure.
Rogers is among 12 homeowners whose North Cedar Street backyards line the top of a bluff above North Park Mall shopping center on the southwest side of John F. Kennedy Boulevard and McCain Boulevard. Large rocks began to fall from the bluff last February and cracks started snaking across three backyards.
On Friday, those residents voted 7 in favor, 4 against and 1 abstention - a difference that may not be decisive enough to go forward - on a proposed plan by the city to form an improvement district that would pool money to repair the hillside. Cypress Properties Inc., the shopping center’s owner, has already agreed to pay the bulk of the half-million-dollar task of shoring up part of the bluff.
Homeowners would be in for about $10,000 each, plus any future maintenance fees for recurring problems. Rogers and others have said they want other options and more assurances for their properties’ safety.
“They say they will fix three yards and then will be done,” said Rogers, who has lived on North Cedar Street for 10 years. “This is one hillside. Fix all of it.
“The maintenance fees - that’s a blank check,” he added. “We want it done, but we want it done right.”
Early on, sporadic rock slides on the bluff left homeowners, shop managers and city officials holding their breath for months fearing a worst-case scenario of a major rock slide that would crumble homes, send boulders crashing into stores, take down city power lines and rupture natural-gas lines embedded in thehillside.
“It’s unbelievable that it hasn’t come down,” Mike Smith, North Little Rock’s chief city engineer, said last week. “We had one of the wettest rainy seasons ever last year. Water is the biggest culprit that slope has, and it hasn’t fallen.
“It’s just incredible that it hasn’t moved. We have no idea how or when it is going to come down.”
Several residents blame the problem on the shopping center’s construction around 1969. Dynamite blasting used to excavate the bluff to make way for the retail center below houses already built on North Cedar Street earlier in the 1960s resulted in cracks in some homes. Repairs then were paid for by the shoppingcenter owners, residents said.
Cypress Properties, though, took over the property in only the last 10 years and wasn’t involved in the excavation. The city isn’t liable for the hillside, City Attorney Jason Carter has said. The city has offered about $25,000 in Ward 1 drainage funds and the use of city trucks to haul away dirt and rocks, to alleviate some of the cost, he said.
Hal Kemp, attorney for Cypress Properties, wouldn’t comment on the proposed arrangement or his client’s role in the discussions.
“We continue to look at solutions,” Kemp said last week.
Homeowners who agreed to talk about the situation said they are innocent parties whose home values have declined because of the bluff’s deterioration.
“The bottom line is nobody wants to step up and take responsibility of fixing it, and that’s what they ought to do,” 22-year resident Tim Wooldridge said. “We shouldn’t have to face the financial burden of it. We didn’t have any part in that [excavation].”
Joe Caple, who lives on the west side of North CedarStreet away from the bluff, talked about his concerns last week for the whole street because of the bluff’s effect on the homes that do line it.
“I’m worried about protecting the neighborhood,” Caple said, mentioning the two empty houses across from him. “What concerns me is that the city is trying to wash its hands of the whole thing.”
The city has worked for eight months to broker an agreement between the homeowners and the shopping center owners, said Carter, the city’s liaison in the negotiations. The improvement district solution was intended by the city to be its final involvement.
An improvement district - a widely used arrangement by North Little Rock and other cities to let neighbors pay a special fee for a variety of services, most commonly water or sewer improvements - would allow the neighbors to pool their money to help pay to solve a common problem.
That solution, while not agreeable to everyone, is still likely to be less expensive and time-consuming than a lengthy court battle, Carter said.
“I think everybody has pushed this as far as they can,” Carter said. “I don’t know what additional steps anyone at the table is willing to take. I don’t think anybody is willing to move much more.”
After Friday’s vote, Carter said he isn’t sure what will happen, since the result was so split.
“I don’t know if they [the majority] will be confident enough to go forward in light of the number of objections,” Carter said Friday afternoon. “Where we’re at right now, I don’t know.”
Where that leaves North Cedar Street’s bluff-side residents, Rogers said, is sitting atop an unstable hill with their property values in peril, if not their homes.
“We’re just normal people struggling to save our neighborhood,” he said. “And we’re just sort of left hanging.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 02/21/2010
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