Walmart’s relocation mandate could further fuel an economic boom in Bentonville
Mike Duley moved from Tampa to Northwest Arkansas in 2006 to work for Kraft Foods as a supplier with Walmart, which is based in Bentonville. After choosing to stay in town to be with his wife and making a career change to real estate, he’s now chairman of Keller Williams Northwest Arkansas, handling thousands of real estate transactions each year.
This is a familiar story for Bentonville and the surrounding Fayetteville metro area. Many of his real estate agents also initially came to town to work for or with Walmart, he said. Now, they’re helping some of the reportedly thousands of Walmart workers who have had to move to Bentonville this year.
In May, Walmart chief people officer Donna Morris told employees in a note that the retailer would ask most of its remote employees — as well as most of its office workers in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto — to move to, in most cases, Bentonville. Some would move to offices in the San Francisco and New York areas. The company did not disclose the number of employees who would move, but Bloomberg reported that thousands of Walmart employees would be moving. Around 15,000 of Walmart’s more than 2 million employees work in Bentonville, per reports. The company is not alone in wanting to bring its office workers together in person: Amazon will similarly require its workers to return to the office five days a week in 2025 after allowing them to work from home twice a week.
People were required to move by the end of this month if they accepted the move, per Bloomberg, which reported that in a Zoom call in May, Walmart employees shared worries about their families and wanting to maintain remote flexibility. The company, however, is making a major investment in its hometown facilities, building a new, 350-acre headquarters campus, including walking and biking trails, a hotel, fitness facilities and a large childcare center.
Brandom Gengelbach, president and CEO of the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce, said that while Walmart’s decision is a big deal, he sees it as just one more win for Northwest Arkansas. The city’s population has grown from about 471,000 to 590,000 over the last decade, per Census data. The region is also home to J.B. Hunt and Tyson Foods and has had a host of economic wins such as a new medical school and hospital.
“It’s wonderful and amazing, but it’s also something we’ve become used to really the last few years as the growth has taken off,” Gengelbach said. “It’s not like we’re this small town, and there’s nothing going on — and then, all of a sudden, the local company brings in all these people, and we’re scrambling.”
Still, Gengelbach said, the new wave of Walmart moves reinforces the need to focus on planning and developing infrastructure to accommodate growth and have the right planning. The city is also working on a new land-use plan.
“With small towns, there’s such a charm and uniqueness and energy that can make them attractive to people. Nashville has that, Austin has that. But with growth, you run the risk of having all of that become diluted,” Gengelbach said. “It really has caused the chamber and the city and the other community organizations to double down on our efforts to be prepared for this and to be able to ensure that we can keep what we love about this community and what makes it attractive.”
Gengelbach said he doesn’t have specifics on how many people Walmart is bringing to town, but the fact that so many people have chosen to move to Bentonville instead of looking for another job is a testament to the work done by Walmart and the city in developing the campus and the town.
Walmart, founded by Sam Walton, has fueled Bentonville’s growth by bringing tens of thousands of jobs to the area. The Walton family has invested significantly in the area to make it a desirable location for residents. Some of these projects include bike trails created by Walton’s grandsons, as well as an art museum and a new medical school started by his daughter, Alice.
There already weren’t enough houses to go around in Bentonville. Right now, Zillow shows fewer than 300 homes up for sale in Bentonville and the surrounding Fayetteville area. With that, over the last five years, the median sale price has risen 63% from $227,000 to $369,000, according to Redfin. “I think some people are surprised,” Duley said. “They thought maybe they could get a little bit more for their money in the area.”
Because housing inventory is so tight, many are buying homes without seeing them in person, only over video calls, said Calah Andelman, managing partner for The Agency in Bentonville. The real estate company, founded by “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Mauricio Umansky, just opened its first office in Bentonville. She said many are single young professionals who may have previously rented before buying for the first time in Arkansas. It helps that the city has a lower price point than many other regions, especially the coasts, and that many of these workers were already familiar with the city because of work trips.
“It’s the young professionals that love Northwest Arkansas because of the mountain biking, the museum,” Andelman said. “It’s becoming like a small Austin, and so everybody really enjoys it, and instead of being temporary, they’re planning to stay permanently.”
Often, after just a year in the area, people who moved there for work will upgrade their homes or purchase an investment property, Andelman said. Duley, the other real estate agent, said that, like him, many people who expect to move to Bentonville for a short work stint end up staying there much longer.
“It’s certainly big enough where we have nicer restaurants, we have Topgolf, we have some of the amenities of a big city,” Duley said. “You’ve got the best of both worlds.”