Mayor Joe Smith will ask the North Little Rock City Council on Monday to approve a 1 percentage-point increase in the city's lodging tax.
Smith filed legislation on Tuesday to be on Monday's City Council agenda to increase the total tax charged for lodging rentals from 3 percent to 4 percent. The council has authority to raise the tax without voter approval.
The added tax, among other purposes, would assist the Convention and Visitors Bureau with a move to the downtown Argenta Historic District and with its management and maintenance of a public plaza planned for Main Street between Fifth and Sixth. The visitors bureau is to move into the first floor of a planned, three-story office building on city property at 600 Main St.
The Arkansas Automobile Dealers Association, 425 W. Broadway, agreed last week to become a primary tenant on the building's second floor, Smith said in an interview Tuesday. Taggart Architects, 4500 Burrow Drive, which is overseeing the plaza's design, will relocate its headquarters to the third floor. Both Taggart and the visitors bureau were previously announced.
"We're going to confirm [the hotel tax] on Monday," Smith said. "We've got our third partner in the 600 Main building. It's all confirmed."
The building's construction cost, yet to be finalized, will be divided among the three partners, Smith said.
The Arkansas Automobile Dealers Association, in existence since 1932, is a trade association for new-car dealers. Its board approved the partnership with the city after a plaza presentation by the mayor last week, said Greg Kirkpatrick, the association's president. The group has been looking during the past year to relocate from its 8,000-square-foot building across from Dickey-Stephens Park, he said.
The city owns two other properties near the plaza available for development. Also, one block off Main Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, Fort Smith-based ERC Holdings is building a $16 million, 162-unit apartment development.
"With everything North Little Rock has going in that area, with the apartments being built and the plaza development, it seemed like a really good opportunity," Kirkpatrick said. "Everybody wants to get started as soon as possible. I think we all would like to see the early spring of next year for breaking ground and the building being done by the end of the year or early 2019."
The city's Advertising and Promotion Commission voted in April to recommend the lodging tax be increased from 3 percent to 4 percent on rentals of hotel and motel rooms, bed-and-breakfast businesses, campgrounds and three RV parks. The commission, which manages the bureau's budget, now collects a 2 percent lodging tax, with another 1 percent for the city's Parks and Recreation Department, or 3 percent total. The new Advertising and Promotion Commission tax would raise its portion to 3 percent, moving the total tax amount to 4 percent.
Bob Major, the Convention and Visitors Bureau's executive director, said Tuesday that the extra tax revenue would allow the bureau to assist hotels' advertising and with tourism promotions. Lodging-tax collections were $761,294.96 through Oct. 2, according to bureau figures released Tuesday.
The City Council was scheduled to act on the lodging-tax increase in May, but Smith unexpectedly withdrew the legislation at that council meeting. The mayor cited a conflict with a campaign to increase the city sales tax by 1 percentage point. City voters ultimately approved the sales-tax increase Aug. 8.
Both the city sales tax and, if approved, the lodging tax, take effect Jan. 1.
The total tax on a hotel stay in North Little Rock, now 13.5 percent, would increase to 15.5 percent with both new taxes. That includes charges for a 6.5 percent state sales tax, a 3 percent hotel tax, a 2 percent state tourism tax, a 1 percent Pulaski County sales tax and a 1 percent city sales tax. Little Rock's hotel tax is 15 percent.
Metro on 10/18/2017