The Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday teased a new economic development strategy that focuses on improving infrastructure, growing the retail tax base, and maximizing the impact of investments that have already been made in the area. 

At a luncheon for local business leaders, Chamber CEO Brandom Gengelbach informed his audience while pitching them at the same time. The chamber aims to raise $7.5 million to support its economic development efforts over the next 5 years.

A report detailing the strategy is in its final stages and incorporates findings from 14 focus groups and 1,400 resident survey responses. A draft is being circulated among key stakeholders and the businesses that helped fund the research before it’s released to the public.

The region has grown rapidly over the past few decades. But citing concerns about affordability and infrastructure, Gengelbach said the Bentonville area is now at a “tipping point of whether this thing is going to continue to be amazing, or whether we're really going to start to have the negative influences of the prosperity that we've seen.”

Upgrading infrastructure — and finding ways to pay for it — is a top concern. After all, it’s hard to argue Bentonville is open for business when construction has stalled in parts of the city due to sewer capacity issues.

Business leaders, Gengelbach said, need to help local government address the infrastructure challenges that come with growth.

“Our role as the business community really needs to be coming up alongside these entities, helping them, supporting them,” Gengelbach said. “At the end of the day, we need to be a part of the solution, not part of the critique.”

The strategy also aims to expand the local sales tax base by adding more retail shops in the Bentonville area. Sales tax is the top revenue source for the city government.

Recruiting retail shops, Gengelbach said, is not a standard economic development tactic.

“I was always taught your job is to bring companies and jobs to town. Jobs and companies bring housing. Housing brings retail,” he said. “Well, this is going to be a little bit of a different story.”

The existing sales tax base is “not enough to be able to help support some of the infrastructure growth and development that needs to happen,” he said.

Another focus of the strategy is maximizing the economic potential of existing attractions and infrastructure.

Among the assets cited during the presentation: Northwest Arkansas National Airport, Crystal Bridges, Heartland Whole Health Institute, a future medical campus, and a mountain bike park under construction in Bella Vista.

These are “major investments that are being made in our community that other communities would only dream of having,” Gengelbach said.

He expanded on a few specific opportunities he saw:

Ivanka Trump, representatives from Stanford Medicine, and the head of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly all attended the recent opening celebrations for the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, according to Gengelbach.

He said these visits were missed opportunities for deeper conversations about economic development partnerships.

“It is a tragedy that these people were here and then left and we didn't talk to them,” Gengelbach said. “There's got to be an ability for an economic development chamber team, community team … to talk to these folks about what's going on.”

Many Walmart vendors maintain Bentonville-area offices staffed with sales teams. Instead of functioning solely as sales outposts, Gengelbach said those existing relationships could be leveraged to bring additional jobs to the region.

“The accounting, sales, back office, some of these functions, there's an opportunity, I think, to grow the presence of the vendors and the suppliers here,” he said.

Mostly empty fields near Exit 88 on I-49 are currently being developed into a medical campus, with the first buildings expected to open in late 2028. The city is planning a new interchange that will connect J Street to the interstate as well.

Gengelbach sees opportunity to further develop properties in the area.

“Can you imagine the type of retail opportunities that could happen along the interstate with a whole health hospital that's being built in collaboration with Mercy and with Stanford?” he said. “Who owns those properties? How can we leverage those properties?”

The chamber wants to explore how five parcels of land owned by the city government could be developed in ways that contribute to economic growth.

The chamber is seeking $1.5 million per year for 5 years to carry out the economic development strategy. Based on the commitments received, the efforts could scale up or down.

“We're also going to be talking to, obviously, the large corporations and family offices. We're going to be talking to you as well,” Gengelbach told the luncheon guests.

Throughout the presentation, he emphasized the need to hire a team of employees who would work to recruit businesses to the area. Other anticipated expenses include marketing, travel for business development, and hosting visitors.

In addition to securing funding, the chamber plans to establish “key performance indicators “ — data-driven goals that can be used to measure the strategy’s success.