Housing planned by buyer of parcel

A subsidiary of Moses Tucker Real Estate Inc. has purchased vacant property on Scott Street between Ninth and 10th streets and plans to build apartments there, the company's president said Monday.

"It will be similar to some of the properties we've developed in the River Market," Chris Moses said.

Moses Tucker most recently developed the 59-unit MacArthur Commons apartment complex on East Capitol Avenue in the River Market District. It is building a 36-unit complex called the Row at Legion Village at Sixth and Rock streets, which is in the MacArthur Park Historic District. East Capitol divides the two districts.

Moses declined to disclose the purchase price of the Scott Street property, but Jill Judy said she and her husband Mark Brown sold it to Moses Tucker Investments LLC for $435,000.

The property, on the east side of Scott between Ninth and 10th streets, is about an acre and a corner of the property was home to a gas station in the 1980s, Judy said. Little Rock Historic Properties LLC, Judy's and Brown's rental management company, bought the property about two years ago because of rumors that a convenience store might be built there, she said.

"That would have had a tremendous impact on the neighborhood," Judy said.

Little Rock Historic Properties owns about 25 residential buildings in the MacArthur Park and Governor's Mansion districts, she said.

Judy said she and Brown had been looking for a buyer who would put a residential building on the Scott Street property, which is in the MacArthur Park Historic District.

"If you want your downtown to thrive, you have to have population," Judy said. "If you don't have people living downtown, they're not going to go to the boutiques and the little restaurants downtown."

Pointing to recent development projects from Main Street to the River Market to areas east of Interstate 30, Judy said more people are now interested in living in the city's core.

"The fear factor is going away," she said.

Moses said it was too early to discuss details of the Scott Street project because plans were still being drafted.

He said Moses Tucker hoped to get the necessary approvals quickly so that construction could start in the next six months. He said the project likely would take 12 months to complete.