Locat­ed on Springdale’s Main Street, ​“Emma Avenue” is expect­ed to bring new vital­i­ty to the Down­town dis­trict. With the near­by head­quar­ters of Tyson, Wal­mart, and JB Hunt, North­west Arkansas has seen a 133% growth in pop­u­la­tion since 2010, putting pres­sure on the hous­ing mar­ket and lim­it­ing afford­abil­i­ty.

Using a form based code, this res­i­den­tial com­plex embraces its roots through mate­ri­al­i­ty, scale, and engage­ment of the street. An exist­ing one-sto­ry his­toric build­ing on the site has been pre­served and ren­o­vat­ed as one of mul­ti­ple ground floor retail spaces. Floors two through five above are a mix of stu­dios, one bed­rooms, and one bed­rooms + den.

Cre­at­ing an over­all urban design vision for this block and estab­lish­ing a sense of place, the project iden­ti­fies oppor­tu­ni­ties to pro­mote social engage­ment through the use of expe­ri­en­tial urban design, art, and place mak­ing tools that cre­ate an inter­est­ing and inter­ac­tive urban space.

Client: Blue Crane Devel­op­ment
Pro­gram: Mixed-use and exist­ing build­ing ren­o­va­tion (48 rental units and retail)
Size: 70,000 sqft
Cost: $10,000,000

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Part­ners:
CEI Engi­neer­ing (Civ­il Engi­neer)
Free­dom Fire Pro (Fire Pro­tec­tion Engi­neer)
Full Heart Hos­pi­tal­i­ty (Food Service/​Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Con­sul­tant)
Good­friend Magrud­er Struc­ture (Struc­tur­al Engi­neer)
IMEG (MEPT Engi­neer)
Kitchen, Restau­rant, and Bar Spe­cial­ists (Kitchen Con­sul­tant)
Polk Stan­ley Wilcox (Asso­ciate Architect)