A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
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A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
Coming soon to Bentonville: Gateway Park with David Wright
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We sit down with David Wright from Bentonville Parks and Recreation to unpack how Bentonville, Arkansas has evolved from a place people moved to for corporate work into a destination built around outdoor recreation, arts, leisure, and real community connection.
We dig into the big idea that public spaces are more than parks and trails. They are community infrastructure. David explains how intentional placemaking turns a town’s personality into something bigger than a single downtown square, and why that matters in a fast-growing city. Then we talk about how the goal of Gateway Park is to create a connected experience across multiple parks without forcing people to drive from spot to spot.
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Welcome And Gratitude
SPEAKER_01Welcome to A New American Town, the podcast from Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, Graham Cobb, and I am thrilled to be joined by David Wright with Bentonville Parks and Recreation. Man, thank you so much for joining us today. David, you know that I'd call it like I see it, and every time I see you, I'm moved to thank you for what you do for our community. We live in a place that welcomes everybody to come and play and have a good time, but uh at the same time, your job is to build amenities that not only work for visitors, but work for everybody that lives here. And it gets us out of our cars, out of our houses, out of our offices, and with people that are like us, with people that are different than us, and it's a just a really special piece of living here. So as an aside, I just want to go publicly and thank you for that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00I appreciate that. You know, you're you're telling the truth that every time I do see you, you're always so complimentary and so kind about how our programs and our facilities impact you and impact your family and your kids. And um it uh it's one of the things that keep us going. And uh it's it's nice to have that impact, it's nice to have that influence and to be able to truly just enhance the the quality of life of the people who live here. It's it's a lot of fun, it's real inspiring, um, but it's also a lot of hard work.
unknownTrevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01It's gotta be a lot of hard work. Talk a little bit about how it enhances the quality
Parks That Raise Quality Of Life
SPEAKER_01of life. I mean, Bentonville is growing rapidly, quickly, daily. How does the work of enhancing public spaces change how a town like this feels? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_00You know, this the I I love this question. I love that we're starting with this because the answer that we give today is different than the answer we would have given almost 20 years ago. I've been in this role for about 18 years. And and when I started, um Bob McCaslin said to me, um, he goes, I have lived in other communities that I recognize that the the Parks and Recreation Department can truly make a real impact in that community. And I want to figure out a way to the parks and recreation makes that impact here here locally. Back then, it was about um notifying the public um the easiest way to participate in our programs. What what amenities are here available for you and and how do you participate? Um at the time, we were truly run by all volunteer activities. Nothing was run by the city government, nothing was run by parks and recreation. We were a maintenance-only department. And so the most frequent question that I received on my first couple weeks of employment here was um where do I go sign up for soccer or where do I go sign up for baseball? Like nobody knew anything about where to be able to register for programs and be able to find out information of where their kids could just go play. And so what we wanted to do was bring it under one roof and to and to be the epicenter of information, the epicenter of fun, the information uh the epicenter of programming. And so people knew that if we wanted to participate in recreational programming, recreational sports, um, and just get outdoors, Bentonville Parks and Recreation was that one-stop shop to where we will do that. Doesn't necessarily mean that we are providing every single program, but we have information to get you to those programs. And so we don't run the Boys and Girls Club Youth Basketball Program, for example. But if you come to us and you ask us about basketball, we know exactly where to send you. We tell you the person's name, their phone number, the email, and say if you contact this individual, they'll be able to be able to take care of you. If you fast forward to today, what we've done over the last two decades is that we're not just this programming machine, if you will. Um we've really transformed um Bentonville with outdoor recreation. Right. Two years ago, we were a com we were a corporate town, and we were here. People were moving here to either work for Walmart or to sell to Walmart, right? Yeah. Now, nowadays, people are moving here for the quality of life. They're moving here for the outdoor recreation opportunities that we provide, the mountain biking, the access to the Ozarks, the access to rivers and canoes or go to go canoeing and kayaking and the buffalo and those kinds of things. We've transformed our local economy from truly something that's relying on Walmart to now something that's diverse by nature. The corporate setting is still there and it's a heavy presence and it always will be, but it's also this tourism destination for arts and leisure and outdoor recreation.
SPEAKER_01Well, and and the investments that the taxpayers make, that the private sector and the public sector makes, um, they're really intentional, and you guide that intentionally. I think back to planning meetings and info meetings and brainstorming sessions about the Quilta Parks. And now you go out and on a Saturday or heck, even on a Thursday morning when you're at Dave Peel, you see what that means. So outdoor recreation is all of the there's all the programming and that kind of the big name playing, like the bikes, you know, cycling and kayaking and all that. But it's also sitting on a bench listening to somebody play guitar. Trevor Burrus, Jr. There's no question. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And that's a huge deal. And you're doing things intentionally, improving and helping overcome some challenges.
Public Spaces Build Real Community
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So I think I think the thing that that we try to talk about in our office a lot, I mean, there's parks, there's trails, but there's public spaces. Right. And how do we focus on those public spaces to bring people together to build community? The strongest type of infrastructure that we have, and not just Bentonville, but in in in cities across our country, the strongest infrastructure is community. We all need water and sewer, we all need roads, we need great police and fire departments. But the cities who have community are often the most successful. They they there's people with with with pride in their community, there's people who want to spend their money in their community, there's people who want to live in their community, and the thought of process of relocating somewhere else doesn't enter their mind because they can't imagine leaving that town with community. Right. Our public spaces like the Quilta Parks in downtown, but it's not limited to that. Creekside Park in the southwest part of our community, Memorial Park in the northeast part of our community, each of these facilities build community and it makes what it makes Bentonville what Bentonville is. Ten years ago, that personality of Bentonville was the downtown square. And that's a great personality to have. But if you if you go to today, it's a lot more than the square. It's the Quilta Parks, it's the mountain bike trails, it's memorial parks and the sport complex, it's the diversity that you see at Creekside Park. Um so our personality is a lot different than was, let's say, ten or twenty years ago.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Why Gateway Park Had To Happen
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So Eighth Street Gateway Park, what what challenge was that trying to tackle? Because it's a little bit of all of the things that you mentioned.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, it ri it really is. It it um you know, if we go back to the initial conversations of this, and this is 10 years ago from from where we sit today. Right. Um I I can remember speaking to a fellow uh and a friend of mine, Brian Hooper, that works for Walmart, and there was 25 acres that was loaned that was owned by Walmart in in this area. And I told Brian um that the the Play Bentonville plan, our 10-year master plan had just come out, and it had talked about how 58 percent of our residents lived west of Walton Boulevard, but only 8, 8 percent of our public recreation space was there. Now, this is before Kohler, this is before Osage, this is before Creekside, this is before any trails that we had on the west side of Walton Boulevard. We just didn't have any public land on that side of the side of the highway. And so I said, Brian, what would it take for us to be able to purchase that 25-acre lot that y'all have up there? If we fast forward a couple weeks after that, maybe even months after that, um, a representative from the Walton family, a good friend of mine, Allison Jumper, who's the parks and rec director at Fayetteville now, um, she worked, she worked for Tom and Stewart Walton at the time, and she came back and she goes, Hey, I I know you're talking to Brian. What if instead of you purchasing that 25 acres from Walmart, what if we were able to take that piece of property and the adjoining property, the adjacent properties to it, merge them together in one 100-acre area, and then we work together to build this public space and go from there. And then the more we started talking about that and we started thinking about the future developments that were happening, is that you had Citizens Park where the Bentonville Community says community center is on the most further further south piece of property that we have in town. If you come a little bit further north, there's Osage Park. Come a little bit further north, there's Creekside Park. And then you get here, and here's Gateway Park, and then you go a little bit further north, there's Kohler.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So we started talking about that you have this 100-acre piece of property that has the potential to be, you know, ground zero of this outdoor recreation experience. But what we wanted to do was not build one park or five single parks. How do we build an experience for our citizens, for our visitors that are connected, that are truly connected via trails that we're not even having to, you know, take your car out of your driveway to get to. How do we get somebody to each of these destinations and let this gateway park be the epicenter of of those of those spaces? So here we go. We we we've got we've got the land, we've got this big uh overching project that we want to do that's that's connected and true and a great experience for our residents. Um but then what what what do we put in this space?
Citizens Shape A 100 Acre Park
SPEAKER_00So in February of 2020, we hosted a a public meeting there on the piece of property, and um we had this this great turnout, really creative public input process where we just asked our citizens, what would you like to see in this space? And and man, Graham, it was so inspiring to be able to just sit back and watch. You had you had families of, you know, mom and dad would talk about these things they would like to see in a park. But the really cool part was the kids that were drawing bike trails throughout the 100-acre map. They were drawing playgrounds, and they weren't just saying put the playground here. They were drawing the playground for us. It was so cool. And then, you know, we had people that wanted to talk about skate parks and all these other amenities. But we also heard our citizens say, we want these fun things, but we also want to keep it pretty natural. Don't overdevelop this. And so what we did is we wrote out a plan of what this hundred-acre park could potentially be. It kept 87% of it natural, um, but it had enough activity, the playground, the skate park, the trails, um, and and different kinds of trails, the the bird watching and the nature observing, everything else that's in that space, um, can can be there. So what we've got is a is a park design that's really three parks in one. Um you've got a real heavy ecological area that's to the east. We call it the East Park. Um it's probably the most visible area to most folks right now because it's got the bridges, the two bridges that go over eighth street. That will be the postcard view um when it's all said and done. If you come to the to the middle of the park, we call it the park core. That's where the big roof, the big giant pavilion will be. You'll see the um the one acre, about a two million dollar playground that's that's there in that space, the big giant plaza for festivals and different uh public gathering events, and then there's the wheel garden. And wheel garden is a fancy word for skate park because more than skateboards are going to be available to be there. You can you can bring your bike in there, you can bring your scooter in there, um, you can get as crazy in that skate park as you want to as you want to get to. But we hired the best design firm for a skate park that we possibly could. California skate parks had just finished the Paris Olympics um skate park and they were designing the LA Olympics skate park. Wow. And they not only designed it, they built it. And these folks know how to build it. Like if you and I were to drive out there right now, it's 95% complete. It's too early to have everybody inside that space. So what they did is they just left a couple blanks of concrete out to where we can't take off and use that. Oh, wow. But the park is there. Like the the the vision of it, what what people will be available to see is there. You can see it in pictures, um, and it's really inspiring and
Inside The Park Core And Trails
SPEAKER_00really exciting. The last piece of this is West Park. And that West Park piece is as close to the homes, the residential area as it can be. And so we want that area to feel a little more residential and a little more neighborhood park feel. So there's a little strider course, there's a boatering area in that area, there's a small playground. Wait, go back. A boatering? Bo bouldering. Bouldering. Yeah, my East Arkansas accent. I love it, yeah. And so um and so there's all kinds of little outdoor recreation activities through there, but there's also just a general viewing area. So if mom and dad want to hang out and just sit in the shade and watch their kid maybe hop on a mountain bike and ride the very basic, basic level mountain bike trails that are in there. The the the quasi trailhead is right there inside that West Park area, and you can take off on seven miles of trails, and mom and dad can see you almost the entire time. That is unreal. And so it's really designed to be something that is citizen-friendly, user-friendly, family-friendly. Um, but the exciting thing to me, Graham, is that it's in the middle of these four other public spaces, and they're all connected. You don't have to interfere, you don't have to interact with the vehicle. There's a tunnel under Highway 102 that gets you to Creekside and to Citizens and to Osage Park. And so all of those things are connected, safe, and family-friendly.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So you've you've hit on a couple of things. Some of the things that jumped out, like this conversation was had 2015 with uh you know uh corporate landowners, private landowners, commun and then five years later, February of 2020, great timing to have an input session. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Because you know what happened two weeks later. Trevor Burrus, Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_01I mean the world changed in the So it's an that's an example of Bentonville being one of one. Yes. But one of one for the opportunities, but one of one also for uh citizen understanding that we got to seize the moment, we gotta invest, we got to do something, and then also this learning that you're willing to take on to go, man, I don't know this is a huge deal. Let's figure out how to do it the best we can. Because this is what cities tackled a hundred-acre park, that's what they tackled in like 1905. Aaron Ross Powell There's no question. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Not 2015. You didn't have that opportunity. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00And the ability to find 100 acres of raw land in Bentonville, as recent as 10 years ago, is was just unheard of. And the fact that it was setting right here, almost right in front of our eyes, and we didn't realize it was remarkable. The unique thing about this land, and the reason we didn't realize it 10 years ago that here's all this land sitting there, is that when you're riding on 8th Street, the the land's elevated. You can't really see up in there. And that's the unique thing about this park, is that when we open it and people start using it, you never feel like there's a busy 8th Street on one side of you and Highway 102 on the other side of you. You truly feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. And that'd be a magical feel about it.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. So how will this change maybe the way we get around in Bentonville? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Car Free Connections Across Town
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So so especially for active transportation, and and those of us on a bicycle, if you live in Southwest Bentonville, you're all of a sudden going to have access to downtown, the Walmart campus, the Razorback Greenway in a way that you've never had before. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Store 100. Store 100, absolutely. Absolutely. So you'll be able to, you know, the people who live in Southwest Bentonville will now be able to hop on the Bright Road Trail, travel north on Bright Road all the way to Highway 102, tunnel. There's a there's a ton, it's already built, not a lot of people realize this. The tunnel's been built for about a year. Um it's the longest tunnel in northwest Arkansas at this at this point. Um and and you it will when you enter on the south side of the highway, um, you emerge into Gateway Park. You ride your bicycle through Gateway until you tie into 8th Street. And the and the trail on 8th Street takes you anywhere you want to go. I mean it takes you to the Walmart campus, you can get to downtown there. Um and and you know, even you can reconnect back to I Street and go to Store 100, like you mentioned.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, when you come in on 8th Street and you see the momentary in the you belong here sign this is a pretty great example of the power of that and the ownership of that statement. It's not just a piece of art because it is connecting a rapidly growing section of Benton, the fastest growing part of Bentonville Southwest, with all of the amenities that people have flocked to the square for, which is a huge investment in everybody in our community to say, hey, you do belong here, your kids, we're building a place for your kids to play, we're building a place for you to go run your dogs, like all of that stuff. It's a really big deal. It is very, very special. So talk a little bit about you you talked a little bit about the process of how this all came together, but I mean how do you it's high design, dude. It's high design. How do you make it so high design instill for
Design Excellence And Paying For It
SPEAKER_01everybody? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, I think that's a great question. Let let let's let's go back to the determining who designs it in that in that process. So um lucky for us, we have the Walton Family Foundation in town, and they have a program called the Design Excellence Program, where they have access to the absolute best design firms in the country. Um, it's a pretty exclusive uh group of firms. And so what we do is they hand us over a list of, let's call it five to ten design firms for us to go interview and say who's the right team member for us to do this. The cool thing about this, a lot of times in our industry, when we issue a request for proposal or we ask for a statement of qualifications from a design firm, a lot of times we're going in and we're trying to determine, are you really qualified to do this work? This particular project, are you the right group for? In the design excellence program, we know you're qualified. What we're looking for are what are the one-offs that make you the absolute best? Or what who's the best teammate for us? So we were able to select a group called Port New Urbanism. They had offices in Philadelphia and Chicago. Um, and they were able to select a couple of the local firms here to help represent them because they're because they're national and they're not here every day. Um we we we really liked Port because we saw some of the work they had done in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we loved their public input process. We love the way that they engaged with the citizens of Knoxville and say, what is it that you want in this outdoor wilderness space that they have there? Um and we wanted to repeat it here here in town. So we did that, and I mentioned the public input process that we had, and it was it was great and wonderful, and we got we got the best collection of data. Um, but then to come back in and design it. And that design process really took about two years of of going through and making sure that everything was there. We we we had a pricing exercise. Cross and construction was our construction manager, and so they were in there with us from the very beginning of understanding of, you know, here's this playground, or here's this skate park, or here's um the amount of mass grading we have to do in this site, what's that really going to cost us? Um and as we as we worked on this, our original thought was this is probably a $15 million project. But the more we designed, we're like, man, $15 million is just really not going to get there. So we sat down with members of the Walton family and we said, okay, here's the master plan that we can accomplish really over, let's call it a 20-year period, but the city's not going to be able to spend this dollar figure. We're not gonna be able to come up with the dollar figure all at once. And it was Stuart Walton that said, okay, I'm listening to your value engineering options. I'm listening to you on some potential cost-saving things, and I don't like them. I don't like I don't like the fact that you're going to cut one of the two bridges out of this project. I think that's the signature piece of the design. He said, Don't let's not do that. He's like, let me and Tom work with our family members and work with our foundation to see what we can do to help you. And so because of the generosity of the of the Walton family and the vision of specifically of Tom and Stuart, um, they said, let's move forward with this full 100% package that you've designed. Don't change a thing about this master plan. Let's make sure that the public really likes this, um, but let's not start pulling things back yet because we think we can help you get there. Fast forward to 2021. Okay. Projects designed, we're trying to figure out how to pay for it. Um we went to the taxpayers, we asked the taxpayers, what would you be willing to pitch in five million dollars for for this project? And again, in the back of my mind, phase one is a $15 million project. Um We ended up putting a little more towards five more than five million. It was five million from the bond. We came up with about another two and a half. Um the city did. Um, but that was about the most capacity we had to put towards this project. And it was Tom and Stewart that went to their foundation, their family members, and said, how can we help? And they were able to raise the remaining balance to uh to come up and pay for the project.
SPEAKER_01So that that's um pretty unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00It's so it's so generous, so kind, and how lucky are we all? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01So where are we today? What can we anticipate? If you can talk timeline, I know it's tricky with construction, but but where are
Ribbon Cut Timing And What’s Next
SPEAKER_01we?
SPEAKER_00Well, we're in we're in really good shape. Right now, if things hold true, and let's say there's no major disasters or or weather events that come through, it does look like that we'll wrap up sometime in November and hope hopefully we can cut a ribbon um in November of this year. Um, it gets tricky because November is the very end of the season, and and so what we I don't know what we don't know at this point, but as long as the weather holds true, I think there's a chance that we're cutting a ribbon sometime in in November and we can start making this facility available to everybody. I think you'll see it get really busy next spring. Um when weather warms up, when the trees start blooming, um, you'll be there. But the playground will be open in November, the skate park should be open in November, the trails ought to be open in November. It's it's usable in every sense of the manner at that point, but I think you'll see it come to life in the spring of next year. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Well, if anybody was in Bentonville last winter in November, December, January, that's true. It was spring light. That's right. I mean, there's a lot of bike riding going on. It was real nice out there. Trevor Burrus, Jr. No question.
SPEAKER_00There's days in January that it's nice enough to be outside, and I know this will be a popular destination.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you again. You know, the proof is in the pudding. And when I'm out at a packed farmers market, you can see that placemaking works when you do it correctly, because the little tuckaway spaces, the the the the the tree that you didn't realize was that important to think about is providing some much-needed shade while somebody sips a coffee and their kids have a popsicle. That's a big deal. So thank you for thinking so intentionally about the spaces you create and for doing so much that really does improve the generational quality of life around here.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Graham. I appreciate you. I appreciate Visit Bentonville for being great advocates for our department.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. All right, David.
Closing And How To Stay Connected
SPEAKER_01Whether you are a visitor or you call Bentonville home, Visit Bittenville is here to keep you connected to the people, the places, and the experiences in our new American town. Check the show notes for links to our website, social channels, and our newsletter.