Conway construction slows: though boom has peaked, downtown gets intensive investment.

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EVERY WAVE. HAS TO CREST, AND Conway s building boom is definitely past its peak.

In the first eight months of 2006, $22.45 million worth of new commercial building permits were issued. So far in 2007, the number is $14.2 million, according to data from the city's code enforcement office.

That's not to say that the good times are over for Faulkner County's fast-growing seat. Some of the major projects included in last year's permit figures are still under construction, and major new developments--like North Market Plaza--haven't reached the building permit phase yet.

"We're not growing as fast as we were," allowed residential developer Kevin Watson, who is branching into commercial development at North Market Plaza. "But I'm still selling houses and still selling lots."

Brad Lacy, president of Conway Development Corp., said 2006 was "such a great year that we won't hit that again."

Still, he said, Conway's downtown is seeing unprecedented investment.

"We've probably got 25 to 30 million [dollars worth of construction] in downtown Conway right now," Lacy said. "We've never had this much construction in downtown Conway since it was built."

Unlike the downtown areas of larger cities, Conway's old business section never really fell out of favor, according to Milton Davis, a 75-year-old Edward Jones broker who has owned the building where he works at Oak and Front streets for the past 21 years.

Davis is enthusiastic about the building going on near his Toad Suck Square building, particularly the renovation of the 90-year-old Halter Building directly across Oak Street.

"Anything that helps downtown will help my building and my business," Davis said last week.

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The 34,000-SF, three-story Halter Building was mostly vacant, according to Lacy. But when Bentonville developers Tom and Chris Seay get done with it, "it's going to be back on the market with a high-end restaurant, Class A office space, apartments and condos," Lacy said.

"It's the same with the Steel Chevrolet building on Main Street. It was a pawnshop and a taekwondo studio. When it's finished, it will have at least two restaurants and a space that most likely will be retail. So you are repositioning that entire area."

Chris Seay didn't respond to an interview request. His father, Tom, founded Seayco almost a decade ago after ending a 23-year career with Wal-Mart, and the company has made a specialty of big-box store construction.

Ironically, the Bentonville company seems to have almost missed out on the rollercoaster ride of commercial construction in northwest Arkansas and instead has branched out in Conway. Seayco developed--and is still developing--the massive Conway Commons shopping center east of Interstate 30.

Conway Commons' latest addition, Best Buy, opened in May. Lacy said the shopping area will be getting one more "junior anchor"--identity not yet announced--and one more strip of small shops before the Seays call it a day.

Seayco also built the Hilton Garden Inn that opened last month at 805 Amity Road near 1-40 in southwest Conway.

North Market Plaza

The streets in Kevin Watson's 2.0-acre North Market Plaza development, on the north end of Donaghey Avenue, have been cut and were scheduled to be blacktopped this week. The first two residents--a Metropolitan National Bank branch and a branch of Arvest Bank--are both expected to open in about 60 days, Watson said.

"I think they are racing to see who will finish first," he said.

It's the start of what Watson expects to be a four-year build-out of restaurants, "high-impact retail," loft apartments and gated town homes. The land itself is valued at $5.2 million and the total development is projected to cost $45 million to $48 million.

The location is about two-and-a-half miles from downtown and near the fourth Conway exit planned on I-40.

No tenants have been signed, Watson said, but the lookie-loos include "a couple of Little Rock restaurants ... who are not national chains," cell phone stores and coffee shops.

"This is not a big-box area," he said, conceding that the Seays had already snapped up all the likely retailers in that category.

But he would very much like to attract a medium-size box in the form of a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market or other supermarket.

Unlike Scherman Heights, a mixed-use development at College Avenue and Salem Road, North Market Plaza faced no outcry from angry neighbors when its rezoning was recently approved.

While growth in Conway, whose 2006 population was estimated by the Census Bureau at more than 52,000, is slowing, there is nothing like a glut of empty houses, Watson said.

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"The absorption rate has slowed, and there's no denying that, but even at the slower absorption rate, there's not a glut of homes at all in any price range," he said. In the $150,000 to $200,000 range, there is only a two-month supply.

"While it may be a less rampant pace, it's back into the good old steady Conway-continues-to-grow mode," Watson said.

By Gwen Moritz

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