A couple of days ago, I went to an actual dinner with Steuart Walton. If you don’t know who Steuart Walton is, he is one of Sam Walton’s grandchildren. This event was hosted by the Bentonville Library, a fundraiser for the library itself.
The fundraising dinner with Steuart Walton tackled many things that affect Northwest Arkansas, including affordable housing, transportation, smart growth, and opportunity.
In this article, I will discuss the dinner I had with Steuart Walton, one of the Walton heirs. We had to pay for tickets to get in there, and it was a great time. So let’s talk about that.
Video:
The Walton Family and Northwest Arkansas
The Waltons are the wealthiest family in the world. Interestingly, they have decided to continue to invest in Northwest Arkansas. The Waltons will be here for the long term as they have the Walmart headquarters in the area along with JB Hunt, Tyson, and other big companies.
The event was attended by seventy-five to one hundred people, but we were able to sit and listen to Steuart talking about his future for Bentonville and the whole area. Additionally, Walmart executive vice president Anthony Soohoo also attended the event. Soohoo moved to Bentonville from Silicon Valley three years ago, and he asked Steuart a few questions about NWA.
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I will recap what was discussed at this event below:
Affordable Housing in Northwest Arkansas
The first thing that they addressed right away was affordable housing in Northwest Arkansas. I cannot stress enough how big of a deal it is for the Northwest Arkansas Council, Walmart, other big businesses, and everyone in Bentonville, Fayetteville, and the rest of the region to ensure that housing stays affordable.
They’re moving all the levers possible to ensure that they keep housing affordable in the area because it will be a massive deterrent in the future if they don’t.
I’ll mention how they’ve seen bigger cities grow in the last ten years, like Austin, Portland, and Seattle, and how they see them fail in numerous ways. They’re trying to catch those failures and try to avoid them.
The exciting thing that Steuart mentioned is that Northwest Arkansas has time. They’re not behind the eight-ball. They can see these problems coming at them, and they can adjust accordingly as they need to.
Housing prices in Northwest Arkansas are getting close to the national average, so they’re trying to make sure that they stay there or below so that people can continue to live, afford a house, enjoy businesses, enjoy the outdoors and have a good job as well.
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Also, I have a 3-day itinerary that can help you decide what activities to do if you’re overwhelmed by everything Northwest Arkansas has to offer.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a foodie, a sports person, a sightseer, or want to spend quality time with your kids; I have something for you. Check out the link below to learn more:
https://www.allthingsnwa.com/3-day-itinerary-northwest-arkansas
Transportation
Steuart also talked a lot about transportation.
Now, Northwest Arkansas doesn’t have the best public transportation system. The reason is that the region is a big, spacious area, not a tight-knit, tall skyscraper area. There are many miles here; yards and things are bigger. And the interesting thing is that public transportation doesn’t make sense even when you put it on paper.
To solve that problem, rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the infrastructure of buses and everything else, what they’re trying to do instead, which you can see now, is every single city has a plethora of alternative transportation versus just buses.
This is why you can travel across the city in many ways, like bike paths and sidewalks. It’s easier and better to invest in a city’s infrastructure with pathways and other means of transportation instead of the large public transportation in large cities.
One of the things that Steuart wants to accomplish is the fact that all of Northwest Arkansas might be the first or only place in America to have a full area where you can travel anywhere in the area on a bike or a one-wheel kind of thing, an electric scooter, or any other transportation.
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Smart Growth
Another topic Steuart mentioned was smart growth. Northwest Arkansas wants growth, and we want to have smart growth. This goes back to the Northwest Arkansas Council about trying to make sure that growth happens. However, they want to ensure that NWA doesn’t lose what makes the region special: the warm culture, everyone being super friendly, and many interesting and fun communities in the area.
What we want to do is grow smart versus just growth for the sake of growth. One of the benefits we have is to look at other major cities that grew way too fast, such as Austin, Portland, Seattle, and New York, and see how they had a couple of issues there and how we can do it differently.
One of the things we’re doing is trying to keep growth happening, which will not be a problem because growth isn’t slowing down but also keeping that community nice and tight-knit in the area.
This is why the Walton Foundation, Bentonville, Fayetteville, and other areas are investing in numerous parks, community centers, trail systems, and many other things that gather people together versus just having to be in their little areas or their little apartments doing their own thing. Because they know that if they forget about those, we will lose the community.
If you want to learn more about the best things you can do outdoors in Northwest Arkansas, you can read my other article here.
Opportunity
The last thing Steuart talked about was the opportunity to do things brand new that we had never done before. I keep hearing about how Northwest Arkansas might be the next Austin, which could be farther from the truth. The region has no intention of becoming Austin.
What it wants to do is to become a better Bentonville, become a better Fayetteville, become a better Northwest Arkansas. They’re continuing to double down on the things that make them famous and so different from other places in America.
That’s why it’s so fascinating for them to continue to grow in other areas and be the best that they can be at what they’re good at, whether that’s rock climbing, more outdoor spaces, more indoor spaces, more businesses, or more incubators for small startups.
They’re not trying to become other things. There’s so much opportunity because they’re so laser-focused. They want to be the best at it and draw more people to the region. I think it’s admirable because you see other cities grow and do everything. But when you become all things to all people, you become nothing to no one.
So, Northwest Arkansas is geared towards a specific group of people. And it’s very desirable because it’s family-oriented – the area has outdoor trails, a great outdoor scene, great businesses, wonderful family life, and a great community.
Conclusion
Northwest Arkansas has grown exponentially in the last ten years. However, people don’t understand that many things, such as infrastructure, have been put in place and are finally at the starting line, ready to grow.
Tom, Steuart, and Alice Walton have invested heavily in Northwest Arkansas in the last ten years. They have developed and put so much money, thought, energy, time, and resources into the region. And now we’re finally at the starting point of growth in the area.