Pat Hays
Patrick H. "Pat" Hays is Mayor of North Little Rock.
In a "Future Visions" piece for the Arkansas Times, Hays recalled that his "administration's commitment to downtown development began early in our first term when we realized that growth by annexation was not really feasible for North Little Rock. Also, we understood that we had tremendous assets like available land and a historic downtown with a small town flavor."
In the early 1990s Hayes and the City of North Little Rock helped found the Argenta Community Development Corporation, an organization dedicated to downtown redevelopment. During his tenure the city received a 1991 Federal Highway Administration grant to build part of the Millennium Trail on the north side of the Arkansas River, built the ALLTEL Arena and Dickey-Stephens Park. Said the mayor to the Arkansas Times, "In a little more than a decade of redevelopment, the downtowns of Little Rock and North Little Rock have been the beneficiaries of nearly 2 billion dollars of public and private investment. Impressive as that is, it is my belief that the best is yet to come as visitors and residents alike come to live, work and play in this evolving, beautiful and exciting urban community."
