LRretail

It would be very difficult to gather any steam behind a retail effort on Main Street unless it were a grocer or perhaps a Walgreens. They already have one in SoMa. But I guess we can always hope and you gotta start somewhere.

That's really too bad. I had hoped that location would stay occupied. Marketplace was busy when it first opened up. But it seemed to have been a lot slower here lately.

That's awesome news. I'm glad the owners finally got the deal done.

I guess I shouldn't say that the deal is dead as much as it is in a holding pattern. The plumbing was put in as part of the due diligence process. Lowe's had to make sure they could put the building in without any issues. But from what I'm being told the land acquisition has hit some bumps. Lowe's had looked at this particular property a number of times. It was actually cleared for Lowe's to use it back when the Hank's furniture store was built. If Lowe's and the current owners can come to an agreement on some things this may still happen. But it's not likely going to start construction or anything any time soon. The reason why the land next to Kroger has not developed is because of the Whisenhunts family who owns the property. They have lots of money stashed away and don't exactly need to do anything. They are very deliberate in their development process. One of the primary architects of the Shackleford Crossing development now works for them. I think they've drawn up a development plan about 10 times. There's been an effort to pull in upscale brands into a shopping center on that property but they've all gone over to Promenade. Because of the cost of the land, which will be expensive, and the behavior of the current owners it will likely be many years before something is constructed there.

Allegiant's business model is pretty simple. Get families to Disney...that's it. Their fares are about half, sometimes 1/4, the price of the other airlines including Southwest. Their flight schedules are based on a family going to Disney through the week or the weekend. So there's flights that go down there on Sunday and often times come back Thursday or Friday. Our family takes frequent trips to play in Orlando and we plan our trips around Allegiant's flight schedule or use airline miles to get a one way leg back to LIT. As for the LA flight, again get the families to Disneyland instead of WDW. If you book rental cars or hotels along with your flight those also come at a steep discount. Customer service once the sale is done online is pretty much non-existent. If you want to make a change to your flight, good luck. They also charge for everything. They give you half a soda, nothing more nothing less. Cheap no frills flight to see the mouse.

I think 300 Third did well because of its location and the users in the building were set up better. The River Market Tower is still not completely sold. I know that several of the investors in the River Market Tower got really gunshy with regard to future investments after that. I still feel like the multi-use building at 521 Pres. Clinton Ave is the best out of the Moses Tucker projects with the hotel, bank, office, and condo uses. I feel like that's what the Boyle Building on Main Street might turn into after all is said and done.

Dead deal for the time being.

The symphony has been let out of their contract with Reed. They will likely never be able to locate into the space that was made for them which is a shame because they were supposed to be the primary creative element of the "creative corridor". Reed has really screwed everyone. His tenants, his partners, and the city. He's botched the last two efforts of other parties to buy the properties from him and was a strong reason why the State of Arkansas changed its historic rehabilitation tax credits. He might have had good intentions from the beginning but has really been a huge detriment to Main Street Little Rock. I very much hope he allows the sale of his properties to go through so he can pack his bag and go back to Oregon.

Moses Tucker has built several condo elements downtown and they've been slow to sell. Apartments are quick to lease downtown but developers are cautious because you have to look at those projects from the income approach. Even though developers can get top rents in the city within the downtown area, those rents are still not comparable to what landlords would see in bigger cities. So often times the cost of building hi-rise apartment units is not worth it. They won't generate enough income and the feasibility studies come back negative. That's just my $0.02 from what I've observed in the market.

Sears has been limping along there. Although I'm sure it was the top grossing Sears in the state, that's probably not saying much. Sears was always very coy with ownership of the property. They would always commit only two one or two year extensions of their lease. This last renewal they asked the land owners to help them remodel or build a new building and the owners refused. After no word back from Sears, the land owners notified Sears of non-renewal and have been secretly marketing the property for about a year. The commercial agents representing the ownership group is not very informative and has been very vague to local reps about what they are expecting as far as rent or any general plans besides the Kroger. The layout of the center seems to change from day to day.

I agree with you on this. While I like doing business with Everett, I'm not very inclined to drive from Little Rock where I live to Benton for service. I bought an Infiniti back when the dealership was owned by Ellis. What a HORRIBLE vehicle. The engine failed at 20,000 miles and needed a full replacement. Even though the dealership fixed it, it absolutely killed the resale on that vehicle. Then the dealership moved to Colonel Glenn and I didn't want to fool with driving there for service. I can't imagine having to drive to Benton to get an oil change. But looking back at the sales strategy, Everett will flat out make $100 on a vehicle to move it. They absolutely make their money on volume. But I honestly can't see you selling THAT many Infinitis. Many said the same thing about Parker and the Lexus brand back when they moved. So maybe I'm wrong.

The brand really has languished on for a long time. The last time I was there probably about three months ago the food was not good. Perhaps it was the lack of business but I could tell something was off. The whole idea of another chinese buffet at this location makes me want to throw up. I can't really think of any buffet joints that are all that wonderful. With such a big building and that much parking, I'd love to see a better use for this place. Maybe not a restaurant although the landlord has the lease priced for a restaurant. Restaurants that are 8000SF never really seem to do well. Perhaps they will cut this building up for multiple uses. This small stretch of markham would benefit from solid tenants to maintain traffic. Chick Fil A, Jimmy Johns, and la Madeleine really help. A JJ's Grill opened up in the shopping center down the street a bit. They seem to be doing well.

I agree with you. When they don't share numbers that usually means it's not worth disclosing. But then again with Robinson going through it's current rebuild, perhaps we'll both be wrong. I hope so.

Technically.... yes he's retired. But he still heads up the CALS foundation, which has a stake in the parking deck. Bobby also shows up to work on a normal basis even though he's retired. Bobby is Bobby. Personally I hope he finds a nice sunny spot somewhere and props his feet up for a change.

Agreed.

I'll second on this statement. Definitely got what he wanted. I'm not sure that any parking deck is "pretty" per se but I'm absolutely baffled by the facade. I'm not sure what the point is. My primary disappointment with it is that it doesn't fit anything else around it. It doesn't look like it belongs.

I will agree with you that the riff raff goes everywhere. I read recently in the paper about women getting their purses snatched at Promenade and the Chenal Kroger. I also agree with you that Park Plaza is a great retail development and has been for a very long time. I've also lived in LR my entire life and have not experienced many problems with Park Plaza...except for the last three years. My wife was shopping at Dillard's and some of the riff raff got so close to her trying to stick his hand in her purse that she ended up having to treat him to some mace. Two years ago, my son and I were shoved onto an escalator by a guy throwing more racial slurs than a bad comedy show. Two sheriff's deputies had to take him into custody while fighting off a crowd of 12 of his buddies. During the holidays last year my kids and I went to Park Plaza to return and exchange Christmas gifts and were caught in a full on brawl with what had to be hundreds of high school / college age students in the food court. I had a table thrown at my face so hard that I had to get stitches on my left eye. My 5 year old daughter was hit with a chair in the back and won't go back to the mall at all. Last month my wife took a gift back to Park Plaza to exchange for the right size and walked into a group of 20 women who seemed to be having a brawl / hair pulling contest in front of Gearhead which moving into the other end of the ground floor with 8 security guards trying to break up the fight. I love Park Plaza too. I hope it keeps its stores and does great business for many years to come. I hope it keeps contributing to Midtown being a great place. But after all these experiences I've mentioned above, I will not be going to Park Plaza for a while. I'll also say that Promenade isn't as good as Park Plaza. It doesn't have the stores or enough of the good ones to compete. But it's good enough to serve Chenal. I'm also huge Apple user so as long as the Apple Store is at Promenade, I'll be a patron there.

I buy stuff from Gearhead all the time. The outlet mall store was nothing like their other stores. I went there opening weekend. Walked in for 3 minutes and walked out. Haven't been back since. It felt like to me they just put up whatever wasn't selling at the other two stores, none of which was in my size or what was something I'd buy. I think it was a misstep from the start. Doesn't keep me from buying from the Promenade store any less though. I don't go the Park Plaza store simply because I don't go to Park Plaza anymore. One too many experiences with the riff raff that goes there to cause trouble. I feel badly for the security guards there.

Panda Express has been looking for sites in Little Rock for a while. They are sort of like Ruth Chris. They'll put their feelers out and then go away, come back, go away. I would agree that the Panda Express that used to be in the parking lot of McCain Mall many years ago is absolutely nothing like the current iteration of the brand. The current generation of stores coming out are very much of the same vein as other fast casual brands out there now.

It's been very busy there ever since they opened. I noticed that if you have several people in your group and everyone orders separately you may get orders coming to your group at different times depending on what each person ordered. Personally, I'm sure they didn't plan for lines to be so long so I'm uncertain as to what one would expect them to do about the line except let the line go out the door. Which is what happened while I was there. I'm not sure what happened while you were there but the bread station had thongs on a holder next to the tray of bread. One guy in front of me tried to get the bread with his hands and one of the employees almost came unglued asking him multiple times to use the thongs. My wife is a la Madeleine fanatic so I'm sure we'll be going back again and again. It's our place to get coffee and desserts from now on. They're new and once the wait times and lines simmer down I'm sure the issues will get ironed out. The first time we went it was during peak time at lunch and everything seemed to be operating very well. We've been waiting for la Madeleine to open for years. Let's hope they open some more locations.

The owners of this section of Midtown are mostly out of town investors. There's plans to demolish everything including the Sears building and the Sears branded auto center up front and turn everything into a medical office campus. The plan also includes renovating the Doctors Building that was once Doctors Hospital.... Cause ya know, there's not enough medical office in the nearby vicinity or anything - not one bit.

I think they put that fence up so auto body shop people wouldn't park on their lot. There's quite the large parking lot behind the buildings. I would expect they intend for people to park there for overflow. I don't think the former Sears spot was ever available for sale until the Murphy's made the seller a sizable premium over what the property was worth.

Wouldn't have been enough parking for a restaurant unless it was small like 2500SF or so. The Murphy's paid a handsome sum for the property, which was owned by an out of town investor that had an extremely long lease with Sears even though they closed it. I agree with you though. Banks, burger joints, and gas stations...that's all we seem to be able to have open up lately.

Going to be an Murphy's Express gas station similar to the one that opened on Hwy 10 & Taylor Loop recently.

Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and Outback aren't growing particularly well as brands right now because of their parent companies. You may not see them move into new markets very often. Buffalo Wild Wings is growing fairly fast though. It should be a great addition.