I-30 Construction Progress Thread

[MikieTimT]

Little Rock proper suffers from a little St. Louis syndrome in that it's landlocked by suburbs, with nowhere else to grow but west into the mountains west of I-430. That kills the main city population. But west is where the high dollar development is headed.

Any reason why the city cannot expand toward the south along I-530? I can understand why the bottomlands along the river would not see development, but the area to the west of that looks reasonably developable from first glance.

Only reason I can think of is that it puts you closer to Pine Bluff, and that's even worse than living in Little Rock.  Lower real estate prices won't draw people toward Pine Bluff to get closer to the crime and decay found there.  I see the development between Benton and Sheridan taking off sooner than anything along I-530. 

[bwana39]

Little Rock proper suffers from a little St. Louis syndrome in that it's landlocked by suburbs, with nowhere else to grow but west into the mountains west of I-430. That kills the main city population. But west is where the high dollar development is headed.

Any reason why the city cannot expand toward the south along I-530? I can understand why the bottomlands along the river would not see development, but the area to the west of that looks reasonably developable from first glance.

Only reason I can think of is that it puts you closer to Pine Bluff, and that's even worse than living in Little Rock.  Lower real estate prices won't draw people toward Pine Bluff to get closer to the crime and decay found there.  I see the development between Benton and Sheridan taking off sooner than anything along I-530.

The primary reason is that each county has differing quality of schools. Pulaski county in many areas has decent schools.

[Road Hog]

Sheridan in Grant County is growing rapidly, although it's already a big school district. Like a few other towns in Arkansas, it's a 6A school in a 4A town.

White Hall, Greenbrier, Vilonia and Beebe are pretty similar towns – there's about a 35-mile radius from Little Rock where people are willing to commute and raise families. Cabot, Bryant and Conway have graduated to full-blown suburbs. There are others.