The Heights Gets Organized

Arkansas Times - September 5, 2003

The country club neighborhood looks for a stronger voice at City Hall. Really.

By Leslie Newell Peacock

Myra Jones acknowledged the irony in the fact that Heights residents are joining forces to have a voice at City Hall.

The good old boy stream that took care of the "silk-stocking ward," as the area was once called, has dried up. "We're having to learn how to swim in a new creek," the former city director said, nodding her head.

So with help from Southwest Little Rock - in the form of a consultation with neighborhood association maven Joan Adcock - and the steady hand of Jones, whose concerns over city planning and growth go "way back," the Heights Neighborhood Association has been born.

(Reborn, actually. An earlier organization petered out; only the Prospect Terrace subset of the Heights has been able to maintain a strong association.)

This leafy older neighborhood anchored on the east by the Country Club of Little Rock has concerns like any other neighborhood: drainage, street repair, parking, hiking trails, preserving its housing stock.

When the city Planning Department help create a steering committee to draft a "Neighborhood Action Plan," its members, representing several areas within the Heights, realized they had much common ground. They realized that if they wanted dollars directed their way, they needed to organize. The decision to rejuvenate the neighborhood association sprang from the work on the action plan.

One of the main concerns: "Accessory dwellings," garage apartments and other inhabitable structures that accompany a home.

Homes in the Heights - settled at the turn of the century - have had accessory dwellings since they were first built. Many included "servants' quarters" in the rear and until the late 1950s, many of those quarters were occupied. Today, it's often the single med student or the mother-in-law living out back.

That's not what has the Heights people worried. Recently, an absentee landlord was able to grandfather in a garage apartment, in essence creating a duplex in a single-family neighborhood. The landlord believed improvements to the property would be welcomed, but some neighbors didn't see it exactly that way. City rules require that the property owner live in one of the buildings on the property, either the main house or the accessory dwelling.

The steering committee - which eventually morphed into the group that created the neighborhood association - was concerned about traffic, parking and the impact on property values.

Under the current planning law, garage apartments of, say, 700 square feet, can legally house up to six relatives or four non-relatives, but the city only requires one parking space per dwelling.

Nancy Blair, who lives west of University, said there are four or five garage apartments in a three-block radius of her home; neighbors were able to block one attempt to place a garage apartment in back of what was already rental property.

Blair hopes that the association will turn around what is general ignorance of zoning rules and regulations on accessory dwellings. "We don't want new laws put in place, we just want what's already in place to be enforced," she said.

Blair noted that the Heights' midtown location makes it vulnerable to decline, as are midtown areas in other cities. "We pay a lot of property taxes," she said. "We moved up here because we liked the way it was." She doesn't want to see the neighborhood lose its single-family orientation.

There's no problem yet in the heart of the Heights, Jones said, but "we're seeing it cross over" from streets on the west.

The action plan requests that the number of new accessory dwellings - which require a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission - be restricted and regulations be enforced. (The plan, which will be submitted to the Planning Commission in September, does not have the weight of law, but serves as a guide when zoning issues come up.)

A municipal lobbyist for Little Rock Realtors Association, Jones also questions the recent regulation change that lifted the 700-square-foot limit on living space in accessory dwellings. The only limit now on outbuildings is that they not exceed the square footage of the main house and not occupy more than 30 percent of the back yard. (A variance can get you around the latter.) In the Heights, where some of the houses already block out the sun, that could mean huge new garage apartments or pool houses.

The size limit was lifted, city planner Dana Carney said, because there were so many requests for variances from owners of mansions in west Little Rock who wanted to build 1,000-square-foot-plus guest quarters.

Accessory buildings are faring better down the hill from the Heights. Planning meeting minutes showed that no neighbors lodged objections to two large garage apartments now being built behind homes on Ridgeway and Crystal Court.

Logan Bass of 489 Ridgeway tore down a "listing" garage to build a new two-car structure. He began the project, he said, because his car, while parked on Ridgeway, had been broken into 10 times and he wanted a place to lock it up. He thought, "While I'm doing it I might as well put an apartment up there, generate a little income" to pay for the garage, Bass said. Designed by Herron Horton architects, the 675-square-foot apartment has galvanized aluminum window treatments and a porch and a vaulted ceiling inside. It faces an alley behind Ridgeway and has the address 489 1/2.

Accessory dwellings are an asset to the neighborhood, Bass believes, as long as builders follow the rules. He's gone to a lot of expense and trouble, he said, to meet zoning regulations, and he doubts that everyone who's built such dwellings in Hillcrest has. Bass said he made it clear to the Planning Commission that the apartment was a rental property - it's on a separate utility meter - and that he wasn't trying to "hoodwink anyone" into thinking otherwise. So far, he's gotten no complaints from neighbors.

The new 1,400-square-foot structure behind Dave and Kathy Ryan's home at 201 Crystal Court also replaces an old garage. Designed by architect Tommy Jameson, it has parking for two cars on the first floor and an apartment on the second. Its dryvit exterior is painted a rusty red to match the Ryans' brick home.

Kathy Ryan said the neighborhood was "glad to see us putting money back into the property." She said her husband will probably use the space for his office, and she expects it to raise the value of the main home when the Ryans eventually sell. Kathy Ryan said they have no plans to rent the apartment, which does not have a separate utility meter.

Garage apartments "are part of the Hillcrest tradition," Bobby Roberts, a six-year member of the neighborhood's residents' association, said.

Date published: September 5, 2003

http://www.arktimes.com/reporter/030905reportera.html

Reprinted with permission by Leslie Newell Peacock from the Arkansas Times.