Northwest Arkansas residents give feedback for regional growth strategy

Planners working on a growth strategy for Northwest Arkansas are gathering resident feedback and input to understand their experiences and challenges to find solutions that benefit the community, a planning leader said.

Attendees in a virtual meeting Thursday (Sept. 18) heard early insights from the research and feedback gathered by the planners. It’s part of the Growing Home NWA Roadshow^[1] that includes 17 meetings and focus groups across Benton and Washington counties from Sept. 17-24. The growth strategy is being developed to help the area prepare for population growth, “while protecting the qualities that make Northwest Arkansas special,” according to organizers.

The event was organized by the Northwest Arkansas Council and Groundwork, the council’s workforce housing division. Planning and design firm DPZ CoDesign was hired to lead the work.

The strategy, which will complement existing city and county plans, is expected to be completed with recommendations in early 2026.

The virtual meeting took place as an Onward Ozarks webinar, hosted by Randy Wilburn, founder and host of podcast “I Am Northwest Arkansas.” Wilburn said the region has seen steady growth for the past two decades, and it’s only expected to accelerate, with the population projected to exceed 1 million by 2050.

He said the team of planners that includes Matthew Lambert, partner at DPZ CoDesign, and Susan Henderson, principal of PlaceMakers, has “spent time on the ground here in Northwest Arkansas, leading research, gathering input and helping craft a bold but practical vision for the region’s future.”

Lambert said he’s worked here for “a few years” and has been “grappling to understand when people say that they feel that they’ve lost a sense of the small town character as the region is growing.” The residents have “been really wonderful, he said. “But they’re sort of losing connection with their neighbors…that sort of sense of community” as the region grows. The growth has come fast and “sort of came out of nowhere.”

The area has faced growth challenges and has fallen behind on infrastructure, such as wastewater. Traffic is becoming a problem, and housing is unaffordable, he added. These are growth issues, but “growth doesn’t have to create that,” he said. “Growth is also a solution.”

Planners are focused on finding ways to grow in a way that reconnects the community and resolves the growth issues, Lambert said.

Asked about the planners’ work across the United States, Henderson said the “best places are the ones that really know who they are and make their decisions based on being self-aware. And so they’re not chasing trends. And they’re not wanting to be the next Austin or the next Salt Lake. They’re really building on their own strength and solving problems in a way that makes sense locally.”

For its work in Northwest Arkansas, she said the planning team “won’t be picking strategies from other places… We do best practices, and we do learn lessons. But we’ve worked all over, and the places that are doing this really well — some of them you know, and they’re on your list. And some of them you’ve probably never heard of. But the common thread is this. They take their growth seriously, they plan ahead and they make it easier…

“Our goal is to leverage all of the good things about Northwest Arkansas and maintain that momentum you guys have but in a way that isn’t detrimental to your future.”

Lambert said some problems are unique to the area, but others aren’t, including traffic and housing affordability issues. He said one of the most significant issues regarding housing affordability here is that “there’s not enough production of the types of housing that best fit folks where they need it. So we’re building housing in places that are further from jobs, further from services and usually of just one type. But there’s a demand for a whole broad range of housing, especially smaller units and apartments and condos closer to the job centers. And that’s really not being produced, and that has one of the most significant impacts on housing affordability because folks that might want to live near work and either rent an apartment, live in a condo, live in a townhouse, it’s just not available.”

He said people are “sort of forced into a house they can’t afford, and then further displaces the next person and the next person… this whole systemic issue…”

Asked about long work commutes, Lambert said area residents spend 22% of their household income on housing costs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines a household as “cost-burdened” when it spends more than 30% of its monthly income on housing costs. However, Lambert said residents spend 24% of their household income on transportation.

“A lot of people are spending more on transportation, more on driving, than they are on their housing, and that’s a real shocker in some places,” he said. “That’s a tough thing to get over, but you can understand that this is a sort of problem with where growth is, what housing we’re providing and where we’re providing that housing.”

Henderson said at the Rotary club meeting that planners attended Wednesday (Sept. 17) in Bentonville they asked what the region needed to keep young people here, and someone suggested the area needs “community within community… We need a place to gather within our neighborhoods.”

Lambert said some neighborhoods “just in the way that they’re built… create more community engagement and connections.” He said his parents moved from a place where they knew few people to a historic neighborhood where they made friends with many people.

“They were able to walk to the park and meet their neighbors, and now they have this really robust social network – a bunch of friends my age and also their age,” he said. “So it’s really important the way that places are built in terms of being able to support that community.”

Lambert said the planners also met Wednesday with mayors and city staff from western Benton County and discussed their challenges and how they’re investing to resolve them.

“We were talking about how great Gentry is in terms of its … Main Street, anchored by a park – how it has great opportunities to build upon that as it grows — what Gravette is looking to do to grow … Centerton and then their downtown, and also Siloam Springs and Highfill,” he said.

Henderson said a recommendation the planners were going to make is something western Benton County leaders are already doing, and that’s collaborating and being coordinated.

The planners’ last meeting Wednesday was a public meeting at Centerton City Hall “where we had a whole bunch of info, probably too much information about the background that we’ve looked into so far,” Lambert said. “We’ve had before getting to this point a lot of interviews with some focus groups and one-on-one interviews, and… we’ve had our anecdotal conversations with folks throughout the region just happenstance… We’ve sort of assembled our understanding of some of the issues and potential solutions. We’ve sort of brought that to folks and said, ‘What do you think?’”

Planners will use the feedback they gather to help develop the growth strategy. Residents can provide input through a survey or by attending a public meeting. Link here^[2] for the survey.

Following are the upcoming public meetings.
A pop-up meeting will take place from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 20) at Fayetteville Farmers Market on the Fayetteville Square. There people can ask questions and share feedback with the project team.

A public meeting that includes a joint meeting of the quorum courts for Benton and Washington counties will take place at 6 p.m. Monday (Sept. 22) at Springdale City Hall, 201 Spring St. in Springdale.

A public meeting is set from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 24) at The Medium, 214 S. Main St. in Springdale. The closing session will include displays, a presentation, and Q&A.

“The reason the resident should get involved is it gives you all the facts to understand and advocate for the things that you really care about in your own city,” Henderson said. “And so whether you’re showing up for a council meeting or you’re on a board or you just want to understand why your commute just got longer, it enables you to speak to those topics with confidence.”

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