[South Main and the Quapaw Quarter]

Lately there has been more hype about issues with safety along South Main. The Downtown Neighbors' Association brought complaints to the ABC over loiterers in and around Warehouse Liquor on Main. There have long been complaints about loiterers and panhandlers on the parking lot and at the convenience store near Juanita's and Midtown. Last night a 24-year old girl was apparently murdered and another young man was shot as they were in the wrong place at 2 AM as bullets flew in altercation between some locals and some others from NLR.

When is the city going to step in and address this? This is a part of town begging to become its own niche entertainment district like Main St Argenta and safety is the single obstacle preventing the Quapaw Quarter from becoming a vibrant, reborn neighborhood. It's a showcase neighborhood, home of the governor. Can we not clean this crap up?

You have to be blind not to see the potential in the area. Stodola has a big reputation as a historic preservationist. He needs to get on the ball on this situation.

Why not a small police station there similar to what was put in near the River Market? In fact I would argue this is where it should've been built in the first place.

On the crime issue, spotcrime.com has some enligtening information about alot of cites, but while it does include Little Rock, the owner admits he needs someone to accurately feed him statistics, which is woefully obvious http://www.spotcrime.com/ar/little+rock

[Downtown LR outside the River Market area]

Wouldn't the decision to take things slow be yours just by making the decision to take Amtrak? And it's really not all that bad that it goes slowly; I take the train from home in LR to school in Chicago every time that I'm making the trip (and the other way around). The train is always late, but it's relatively dependable in its lateness, and rather than going to the station and waiting for the train, you're supposed to call Julie (Amtrak's automated phone service woman thing).

Don't get me wrong, though, I would love higher-speed service and dedicated ROW for Amtrak trains (almost nothing could make me happier). Nothing was more depressing than coming home to Amtrak from a semester in Paris where I took the TGV several times, and coming home to the CTA and (even sadder) the CAT bus, after RATP and the M