The bankruptcy of a Missouri hotel chain is holding up a project to widen a busy section of Kanis Road in Little Rock, the largest road construction project the city has ever undertaken using only city money.
The bankruptcy has tied up three parcels needed for the project's rights of way before city officials can take bids on the project, city officials said Wednesday.
The city has estimated it would cost $12 million to widen Kanis west from South Shackleford Road to Gamble Road. The city wants to build it in stages, with the first stage being Shackleford to Embassy Suites Drive, said Mike Hood, civil engineering manager in the Little Rock Public Works Department.
"I am optimistic we are going to work all this out in the next couple of months and that job will go to bid, and it will be the first part that we planned from Shackleford to Embassy Suites," Hood said Wednesday. "I believe we can still attain that, get that under construction this year."
The project has run into myriad delays since the first public hearing was held in 2014.
The latest holdup involves the bankruptcy that was filed in 2016 in Kansas City, Kan., by John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts, whose properties include three hotels in Arkansas. The company also opened the Embassy Suites in west Little Rock in the 1990s.
The property tied up in the bankruptcy is at the corner of Kanis and Embassy Suites Drive, which runs between Kanis and Financial Centre Parkway. The west Little Rock hotel's address is 11301 Financial Centre Parkway.
The hotel chain owns nearly three dozen hotels in 16 states, including the Embassy Suites and adjoining John Q. Hammons Center in Rogers.
The bankruptcy involves a dispute over a $300 million loan the hotel chain obtained in 2005.
With the property tied up in bankruptcy, the city is unable to condemn it. Little Rock has retained legal counsel in Kansas City to work out the legal issues.
While that property is in limbo, Hood said the city hasn't gone to court over a handful of other properties with disputed valuations, hoping the issues will work themselves out.
"Most of the parcels that we're still needing are on the stretch between Shackleford and Bowman," he said. "There is one parcel that we're in negotiations with further west of that.
"They're spread out enough that I can't even bid a segment of it without finishing the acquisitions."
The city has spent a total of $2.9 million in engineering and land acquisition so far, Hood said.
Some utility work, including replacing a major water transmission line, also remains, he said. Three homes on the north side of Kanis also will be demolished within the next six weeks.
The delays have reflected the complexity of transforming what began as a rural, two-lane road with no shoulders into a five- and three-lane major urban artery.
The project actually began as two projects divided between Ward 6, represented on the city board by Doris Wright, and Ward 5, represented by Lance Hines.
The Ward 6 section is between Shackleford and Bowman, a section that is a little less than a mile long. The two-lane Kanis roadway would be widened to five lanes.
Kanis west from Bowman to Gamble Road is in Ward 5. That section, which is slightly less than a half-mile long, would be widened to three lanes.
At the public hearings, commuters said the improvements are long overdue, thanks to development all along the corridor, including apartment complexes.
Near Shackleford, Kanis carries about 21,000 vehicles per day, according to city figures. Traffic estimates say that figure will grow to 31,000 by 2034.
Farther west, the count is smaller -- 12,000 daily on Kanis at Kirby Road. But the intersection is the site of a planned apartment development, and its traffic count is expected to be close to what the easternmost section of the project is now -- 18,000 by 2034.
Hines said the delay wasn't unexpected, but it is still frustrating.
"I'm echoing the frustrations of my constituents and of my wife, who has to drive it every day," he said. "Everybody has been wanting to know when it's going to be built."
Hood has been frustrated, too.
"Things were going so well last year I would have told you, 'Yeah, we're going to be in construction in the fall,'" he said. "But you can't anticipate everything that's going to happen in a job like this.
"It's going to happen. I'm optimistic enough knowing the circumstances that it will happen. It's been a long time coming, and I'm going to be one of the happiest engineers in the city when it goes to construction."
Metro on 02/01/2018